Figuring out what to do with one's life can be one of the most difficult things that high school and college students have to endure. I consider myself lucky here. I've always known what I wanted to do. My only trouble was figuring out the details. I started a new blog this summer focused on this very fact where I delve further into this. I am a 20-year old college student, living in the state of Washington. What I want to do with my life, simply put, is to write.
I knew I wanted to be a writer when I got my first journal on my 10th birthday, a pink one with princesses on it and a lock––the key to which I still have hidden somewhere. I knew I cared about doing something to change the injustices in the world. I grew up in the city of Kolkata, India where it was common to see poverty, little children running around with barely any clothes on, or even naked, and families living under the flyover while surviving on almost nothing, among other injustices. At the same time, I could always see the other aspects of the city, the side of Kolkata with the complex malls being built everywhere, the growing number of cars and industry. A completely different lifestyle. To me, this highlighted the great inequality that exists throughout the world. I've always felt guilt and helplessness in those situations. I knew people could make a difference, because I saw my mother help people when she could. She showed me that the little things matter. While I still believe this, I also believe that big changes are possible.
As I became older, I learned about the chaos, violence and injustices all over the world across societies. When I was 13 years old, a speaker at my youth group talked about the genocide in Sudan and Darfur. That was the first time someone had convinced me that I could someday make a change on a larger scale. I already knew writing was my passion, but it made me angry enough to want to do something, and provided me with the motivation I needed to decide what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. I went on every mission trip I could with my youth group, which only further assured me of this purpose. We traveled to New Orleans as part of the ELCA National Youth Gathering to help with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, where I volunteered at a day care. We would spend the day playing with the children and talking to them. I developed one special relationship with a little girl who was forced to evacuate during the storm, and her stories of how her family had to leave their home behind and start over had a significant impact on me. We went to Vancouver, Canada, and volunteered with a program called Youthworks and volunteered within the community. We even traveled internationally to China, where we worked with Chinese students our age and got to explore the culture of the country. All of these trips proved to me that people like me could help change the world, and what better way than by using my love of writing?
The role of travel in my life has also always been significant. Growing up, my grandmother told me stories of her childhood in Sri Lanka, about growing up on a tea plantation and seeing monkeys among other animals. She often told me jokes in Tamil, and would talk about how she spent her free time exploring the areas near where she lived. It made me think about the cultural differences throughout the world that make each place unique, and I wanted to experience it all. I've realized more and more as I've grown up that each place is unique, with a history and culture that is completely it's own. Every single thing in our universe has a background and a place from where it comes from, stories that are created and people's lives that are effected by it. I want to experience as many of these stories and cultures as possible, and be part of many of these stories.
All these aspects of my childhood in India, being exposed to different lifestyles throughout the world and the smaller experiences, all added up to helping me find my own purpose, which was to write about it and bring about a greater change.
This article has been an adaptation from my original blog post.
