Today is Saturday, May 16, 2015. It is exactly one day after my graduation ceremony from Glen. A. Wilson High School, and among the various Instagram posts, Tumblr posts and others about the significance of high school, I sit here at a loss for words.
These feelings, I can assure you, are not of the unhappy sort, however. I merely feel lost as most do when one chapter of their lives comes to an end. The next chapter will start at UC Berkeley, and funnily enough, I'm an undeclared major. I can't understand how I feel about the end of high school, I can't comprehend the brevity of the end of such an experience, but there is something meaningful perhaps, among the incomprehension and the feelings of fear. I can't quite identify these feelings and trying to say otherwise would be contrite. In fact, writing that my seventeen-year existence has given rise to a mature individual would be a disgrace to the integrity of this blog post. And I choose to be honest.
And in my endeavors to be as honest as possible, I must document my experience with Givology.
I started in the summer of 2014 as a development intern eager to develop a sort of hands-on working experience in anything, really. I felt that Givology would be a great asset to my goals for the summer and after doing sufficient research, I really did want to give those in poverty-stricken countries a way to education. Impassioned is the word and impassioned I felt as I set out to make a Weibo (Chinese Twitter) account for the organization. Why not spread the message in a country with 1.3 billion people? Would only help. I took bits and pieces of information I had learned from the #givchats held over that summer and put these stories onto the account. A small following has been achieved, but I still have a long way to go.
This blog would be much too long if I shared the various stories I've heard from students sponsored by Givology. Many students borrow money from all the villagers in a town to fund their education and many others must support their families by simultaneously helping in the fields or finding other work. Depending on the country of interest, the students' stories have some areas of disparity, but they all wish to go beyond their circumstances and move on to bigger and better things. They all keep charging forward, monopolizing on energy from seemingly never-ending energy reserves.
I could do well using some of this energy from reserves I have yet to find to determine how I feel about the end of high school. But I choose to help these individuals because in the world of my priorities, giving to people who deserve more than they have takes shotgun. Focusing on underdeveloped emotions takes the backseat.
Why would anyone do that?
Well, you're asking the wrong person. And I may never find an answer to this question, given my complex webs of feelings and emotions that I already, on a daily basis, cannot pinpoint.
But that's not the point, I think. I think being selfless, giving to a greater purpose and helping the masses bears much more weight in the whole scheme of things. Maybe it's what we do for others in their times of desperation that define our lives and give our lives purpose. Well, at the very least, that's what it did for me.
And that's why I will continue my giving to learning.
[img]/images/user/1842_1600251568430773181.png[/img]
18 MAY 2015