I was listening to a TED talk the other day, and they were talking about the importance of having a guiding principle, a goal of all possible actions. I realized I never had thought about such a thing, I had never thought about a principle that defined my life. So I started to do some introspection, desperately searching for a vision statement. Desperately searching for "a why." Then, it all clicked.

In all honesty, I don't know what I want to be in life, or how I want to do it, when or where I want to do it, but I know what I want to do in life and why I want to do it. I want to bring positive change to the lives of everyone I meet, I want to bring positive change to our political system, political systems across the world, I want to make people's lives better, happier. The why is a bit more complicated, however. I was born into a lower-middle-class family in Southern California. We had a small house but it was always full of cushions, with family, with friends. When I was 6, we moved all the way across the country, just my dad, my mom, and I. My mom got a good job at Wells Fargo and my dad worked as a minister.

They constantly fought, usually about family, expenses, but sometimes I was the subject of the fight. I remember the yelling, I remember the feeling of being in their presence. It was stress-inducing, it made me want to retreat from the world. They got divorced, and although I was close with my dad I decided to stay with my mom in South Carolina and continue my education there instead of moving to a brand new school. My mom and I had our fair share of issues, although there was love there. We fought a lot because she disagreed with how I did things and how I conducted myself. We had a series of financial issues, we still have financial issues, but it threatened a lot of what we knew and loved. I struggled in school, not with grades, not with extracurriculars. but socially and I spent a lot of time at home, living in the stress-inducing environment.

There is more to my story, there is more to the reason why I want to do what I want to do, but the root of it is that I have experienced what it is like to live an environment where love is unstable, where love is constantly being tested, where love is tethered to physical assets, like money. It isn't a pleasant experience, but I was able to grow from it, I was able to learn from it. This is why I want to fight for love. I want to allow people to experience the true beauty of humankind, I want to form relationships with people that bring out the best in both of us, founded on mutual self-respect. Love, I believe, is one of the most powerful things in the world. I struggled with it for a long time till I found a group of kids through an extracurricular I did in high school, they showed me what unconditional love looked like.

Every day, I think about a devotional I gave about what the program had done for me. I had managed to make it through the devotional without crying, but I lost it after I finished. The 40 or so kids in the audience all came and gave me a hug. They hugged my tight, knowing this wasn't a goodbye, and told me how much I meant to them. One kid told me that my friendship meant more than anything to him, one told me how proud they were of me and that she wanted to follow in my footsteps, one told me I was the most inspirational person he had ever met. It was then when I knew what I wanted to do in life. I wanted to bring people together, I want to create that kind of relationship with people, but I want more than anything to create an environment in which that type of relationship is possible.

I believe that positive change is the process of creating an environment where love can prosper, and, furthermore, that justice, freedom, and sustainability are all extensions of love. They are principles, or ideals, of a society that has reached mutual respect for all citizens. It is the final result of promoting an environment where all can succeed.

I believe that the best way to do this is through activism and the political apparatus. Forming loving relationships and fostering healthy environments in one's private life is invaluable, but the political apparatus has the ability to reach all members of a given society and fight for change. Unfortunately, our political system is stained with red and blue, is tainted with corruption, and are plagued by ignorance. I want to work against that, I want to become a part of the system and fight for love. I want to create an education system in which children know they are getting an education, where children feel comfortable forming relationships with classmates, where working together is encouraged, and not be discouraged by physical characteristics or income.

I want to create an economic system that encourages innovation, that encourages personal growth, that gives people freedom of choice, that works for everybody, that creates wealth for everybody.

I want to create a world where the west takes responsibility for their past actions of hate and intervention all across the world.

I want to live in an America not painted red or blue.

I want to create a world where justice can be guaranteed to all and due process is granted to all.

I want to create a world not threatened by impending disaster due to climate change. I want to create a world that is sustainable in its energy use and in its policies.

I want to create a political atmosphere accepting of all people, no matter race, gender, religion, and truly represents the American people.

I want to create a social atmosphere that loves everyone and that encourages people to do their best and be their best, in everything that they do.

I believe all these things bring positive change by creating a conducive environment for productive energies and gives people the freedom to focus less on material things and more on the relationships they form with people, more on making the best out of themselves and those around them. I believe that by working towards these lofty goals we can start to see love become more commonplace in our world, not hate or contempt.

And I believe that I can do that through the political apparatus. It holds so much power, and that power can be used for good, or for bad. It is bad insofar as it destroys the environment in which love prospers, and good insofar as it promotes love. Too often, policy claims to be good, but it not. The world as a whole as made a lot of progress in the right direction since the early ages of mankind but we still have a long way left to go. Only know, we have the technology and the resources and the knowledge to finally make that trek, travel the distance and actually make progress. We just need passion, we just people who care in our political system. And that's the role I want to play in life. I want to be a passionate one. I want to have as much passion as I have the knowledge, and this is where Emory plays in.

Without the program I had mentioned earlier, I'd probably be at a community college or a state school because the passion wouldn't have been ignited within me and I would have never had the desire to bring change. Emory was the only school I got into. I applied to 6 schools because that's all I had the money for. I got waitlisted everywhere. Emory saw my value, and I knew then that it was the school for me. Here is where I will cultivate my knowledge to match my passion. Here is where I gain the knowledge to make the most effective use of my passions.

That won't stop me from pursuing my passions while I am here, however. I want to intern with a Representative in the House this summer, I want to make Young Democrats into an active agent of change, I want to start Amnesty International here on campus, tell people's stories with the Humans of Oxford, and continue to supply food at the Organic Farm. Everything I do here is a deliberate extension of my goals. It is to deepen my understanding of issues I care about, but also to create a loving environment.

All of this, all of my passions, all of my desires are encapsulated with the vision statement, "No matter the obstacles, I will be a force for positive change. I will fight for what I believe in and defend love, justice, freedom, and sustainability in everything I do." This vision statement is my guiding principle for my time at Oxford, it is my guiding principle for graduate school, it is my guiding principle for everything I do. It is the principle in which I judge my actions. It is what I live by.