Take a glorious bite of the whole world

"Love without courage and wisdom is sentimentality, as with the ordinary church member. Courage without love and wisdom is foolhardiness, as with the ordinary soldier. Wisdom without love and courage is cowardice, as with the ordinary intellectual. But the one who has love, courage, and wisdom moves the world." -Ammon Hennacy

So the hamster woke up a bit groggily and did a few laps today. I'm not saying I'm in some deep thinking pattern again, it's just nice to be thinking a little bit. It's also nice to have a break from the nonstop, can't escape it thinking of my last semester at school. Syd inadvertantly started a discussion forum about shopping. Most people at least have a vague buzzing in their head about some store or another. We all can think of a store that's been cited for labor rights, child workers, sweatshops, environmental issues, etc. There's the extreme that says boycott, stop shopping at those stores. Then there's the other extreme that says that boycotting said stores doesn't actually do anything to help the laborers that produce said goods. And there's yet another extreme that says I'm only one person, I can't think of anything to do, so I'll do nothing.

This all just reminded me that this process of learning to give a damn is hard. <-I just stared at that sentence for a long time trying to figure out what to say next. I had two realizations today when I was staring off into the distance. Two of them were things that I've known for a while but they took some time to slam into me. 1) There is more good going on than I know. I've been surprised to find stuff, even in this town. More people care than I realize. 2) Said people are not coming to me anymore. There will be no more invites to campus clubs, to small groups. They aren't going to send an informative brochure to my mailbox to tell me how to change. It's instantly overwhelming to begin to see how much change is neccesary in our Valley, in our state, and our country, and then you look at the world. I was talking to my mentor about how ignorant I felt. How I understand that I need to know what's happening in the world but I have no clue where to start. She told me to pick one country and follow it in the news. Obviously this is a good idea because I will learn about other countries through their connection to the one country. I think the same idea is true, in one sense, about issues. Perhaps in the beginning it is good to start with a focus on one issue. But that doesn't mean ignorance is excusable elsewhere. If I become a recycling fanatic, traveling to parks across the nation to pick up litter, that doesn't mean it's okay for me to spend extravagantly and run over homeless people with my Prius.

Hmm.