I'm sick of talking. I know there have been proud moments in my life where I have stopped eating meat, ended my cellphone plan, and printed on the other side of scrap paper, but really, what have I accomplished? I've always felt like I'm at a standstill. I just have to finish education, and then I'll be a grownup with the means to give money away, the time to help. It's not that I have been completely void of trying. I've volunteered. But I felt like I didn't have enough time to commit, that I was just filling in the volunteer section on my resume. Maybe some day I will change lives of those I will have the pleasure of teaching. It's my hope.

The other week I asked Daniel what he thought of purgatory. "I don't know," he said. "You know what I think," I said, "I think we are in purgatory right now (let me just clarify that I mean some aspects, not all, of purgatory, which I'm not entirely familiar with, and are really messed up in my opinion)."

Okay maybe that's an overstatement, for people like me who have loving families and live beyond their means, but to others, getting through life is no cakewalk. When you think of life as some kind of purgatory, some kind of test, it gives purpose beyond get as much money as you can and seek maximum amount of happiness regardless of expense, some kind of meaning behind all the injustices that occur. I mean, human beings must have empathy for a reason. We have the ability to show restraint (not eating when we are hungry) and compassion, when animals do not, and yet we have the capability to mass-murder and to consume way beyond what is necessary. How messed up is it that we have to choose to give our money away so that we aren't obese with selfishness? Maybe if we start thinking of our time spent here as preliminary, as a way to prove that we aren't the worst thing to ever happen to the planet, we won't be so set on enjoying every second of it despite everything else. Individuality is a selfish road. We may not like to think of the other things walking around on two legs as brothers and sisters, people we should care about and feel joined to, but we are a race. No matter how stupid everyone is, we should have the pride, the humanity, to see and say that all deserve the bare necessities. It's truly disturbing to me that we don't agree with that.