Do you remember what love feels like?

Thoughts of you are entangled

in the ribbons of my dreams;

they unravel in my sleep

but wide awake, all I see

is my reflection

in your eyes

We’ll never make it,

never ever make it,

but I can’t help but want to drown

into your arms

over and over

again

I remember

when you’d trace the lines

on my hands

with your fingertips

and whisper my destiny;

I wish you had told me then

that you weren’t written there

Because you are

in my every breath,

and all I need

is for you

to set me free

so we can find our way

home

Do you remember what love feels like?

With Liberty and Injustice for all?

A few months ago, my 8-year-old cousin asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up.  When I told him I wanted to be a lawyer, he made a disgusted face and said, “All lawyers do is get bad guys out of jail.” I couldn’t help but smile, because that’s exactly what I thought as an 8-year-old. As a child, I would have never considered being a lawyer; law always looked so corrupt. In my mind, lawyers were rich old men in suits like the man who lived across the street, and they all lied to get their money. (And as Mom always said, lying was bad.) But like they say, you can’t help who (or what) you fall in love with. And I, well, I fell pretty hard for law.

I don't know what it was exactly, but I think the first thing that attracted me to law was the way all the lawyers I met spoke about law – with romanticism, respect, and complete faith. And through them, I’ve developed a similar respect for the law, and the way it guarantees equal access to justice for all men and women, regardless of race, or color, or age, etc. But that’s what you learn in the classroom; that’s the way the law was designed. In reality, however, the application of law is far from equal.

If you dig deep down into the issue (not that you have to dig very far), you find that people wrote the law, and people have been shaped by their own biases and preconceptions. So it logically follows that these prejudices will flow through into the policies that they design, and the legislation they support.

Why, after 9/11, have the airport security screening policies of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) evolved to promote racial and religious profiling against men and women who wear turbans? When people standing in line at airport security constantly see people that wear turbans go through mandatory tertiary screening, a negative stereotype is created, and profiling by the federal government is just reinforcing that negative image.

Why aren’t there laws accommodating articles of faith in places like schools, courtrooms, and other public places? By denying access to courtrooms, men and women are being denied their constitutional rights of due process, and basic rights such as free exercise of religion.

Why is Hungary so close to passing a Religion Law that will contradict all European Court of Human Rights decisions by essentially de-registering three hundred minority faiths from status as religious organizations, subjecting all members of minority faiths to a possible ban on their religious freedom and a rejection of religious rights solely based on discrimination?

How can laws promote discrimination and inequality? Wasn’t the law meant to prevent injustice?

I can’t help but think that my 8-year-old cousin was onto something when he scrunched his nose at the mention of law. The law, as beautiful as it is, has a nasty underbelly. People will always scrunch their noses at the mention of law for as long as there are corrupt people in this world, but I won’t give people the chance to scrunch their noses at me. All I hope is that I can be part of the effort to attack the law’s underbelly and stand up for the little guy, because in the end, the law was meant to provide justice for all.

To the iPhone Generation,

The other day, as I was sitting on the ferry during my evening commute, I couldn’t help but notice that everyone around me was on some-or-other electronic device. Most of the teenagers were texting. The woman next to me was talking on her cell phone as her child sat quietly next to her, absorbed in his Nintendo DS. The man in a business suit who sat a row down was busy typing away on his laptop.

But there was nothing unusual about this scene. Nowadays, college students can’t possibly get work done without laptops, little children need cell phones, and if you don’t have an iPod, there must be something wrong with you. And the Internet – I can’t even begin to imagine – how would we communicate without email, or stay in touch with old friends without Facebook and Twitter? We would be lost in oblivion without Google to answer all our problems.

I really am in awe of how fast technology has grown and how quickly it has enveloped our lives.

I remember when my family got our first desktop computer, when I was in elementary school. It was such a huge deal back then, to own your own computer. My sister and I would take turns using that desktop. Now there are five computers in my house and we think nothing of it. I remember in school, teachers would give us projects and ask us to raise our hands if we had computers at home. If we didn’t, we’d have to go to the library to use one. Can you imagine teachers asking that nowadays? 

I remember how my sister and I would record ourselves on tapes. But tapes became obsolete when CD’s became popular. And now, it’s all about mp3’s and iPods.

I remember back in middle school, when we did research projects, we would use search engines like Yahoo! or Ask Jeeves.  I still remember the day when a classmate told me Google was better than all of them. Today, we ask Google everything.

I remember when I got my first cell phone. The screen was green and the characters that showed up on it were black. Picture phones were a luxury. Now I see little children running around with iPhones, which are capable of infinitely more than what my first cell phone could ever do.

I was talking to my friends the other day about how everything has become so simple, so fast, and so digitized. Gone is the romanticism of writing letters; you can connect with someone from the other side of the world in an instant. But as great as technology is at helping us connect with people, it keeps it all digital. And we’re losing real face time and interaction. 

So, from time to time, stop texting, put down your phones and have a real conversation. Break out of your digital bubble and experience the world. I promise, there’s so much more than meets the i-Phone :)

To breathe in the city that never sleeps

Everyone is on

an adrenaline rush,

pacing

fast

like a violent heart,

with people often colliding

in every which way

as they drift about

sporadically

like molecules

dispersing

in the air.

The shapes and colors

all melt

and boil away

into a big blur.

Sometimes I like to stand still

and watch it all

pass me by

as everything

moves

in fast motion.

The people always pace

fast

like a violent heart;

each one shifting

in a unique direction,

determined to get where they’re going

as fast as they can.

Sometimes I wonder why

everyone is in such a hurry

because

in the end,

we’re all going to the same place.

Insomnia.

3:33 AM

Insomnia.

My brain likes to race when my body is at rest.

It’s no secret what’s keeping me up. Thoughts of you float around in my subconscious, which is already clouded by questions unanswered, thoughts unaddressed, musings unkempt.

My mind is a hodgepodge of everything, and nothingness.

You pervade through it all.

I wish you were a drug that would induce sleep, but instead you keep me tossing and turning. Wondering.

I’m tired.

I can hear the sound of the clock ticking.

3:45 AM

I wish things were easy; I wish everything made sense.

Then maybe my mind would stop racing.

I have a habit of labeling, organizing, solving.

But the more I try to compartmentalize my brain, the deeper I drift into deliberation.

Suppose? Maybe? What if?

What if?

But you’re not here to answer me.

And even when you are, I say nothing.

Perhaps I’m afraid, or perhaps I don’t really know what this is anymore.

I wish you’d explain it.

You play games instead.

And so I keep wandering from sleep towards that place called insomnia.

3:56 AM

I close my eyes.

But it’s not about sight.

Why is it that, in this darkness, all I see is you?

Opportunity's Knocking.

I remember I was on my way to India two years ago, on a seventeen-hour flight, and I couldn’t find sleep, so I lifted my window shade. I expected to just see some white fog, since we were so high up in the sky, but instead, I saw a big blue vastness, stretching for miles, and white clouds floating inside, with light radiating from the sun somewhere in the distance. I have never felt so small than I did in that moment.

It’s moments like these that really make you think.

We all spend so much time thinking, stressing, obsessing about things like what we’re going to wear, or eat, or what people think about us. We make our little problems seem like the end of the world, and we are possessed by our limited ability to only care about ourselves.

And then sometimes, you do something like look out the window on an airplane and your whole perspective on life changes.

You realize how tiny you are, and how insignificant your problems are compared to the vastness of the world, and of the universe.  You see the bigger picture. And in the bigger picture, each of us are just a grain of sand on a beach, a spec of dust in the air. We’re each just one in billions and trillions of organisms. Mathematically speaking, we are close to zero. Nothingness.

But my point isn’t to sound pessimistic and say that our lives are pointless. My point is, we need to realize that this is how the world is. We need to believe that our purpose on this earth is not merely to live a life worrying about trivial things that don’t matter in the summation of it all.

I don’t know about you, but I know that I don’t want to be on my deathbed and look back on my life and just see myself. I don’t want to just live for me. I want to see people whose lives I’ve changed, something I’ve created that will last long after I am gone, something that will live when I don’t anymore.

And to do all this, we each need to follow three rules in life: 

1. Educate yourself about others. There is so much wrong with the world, and if we can spend a large portion of our day thinking about our own tiny problems, imagine how much time we can spend focusing on the problems of our friends, of strangers, of countries, or even of the world. If we shifted gears and dedicated some of the time we spend on ourselves on others, maybe we can make a difference in someone’s life. 
2. Take risks. Someone once told me that in life, when you open one door, you often find another. But you won’t find the other door until you open the first. Opportunities don't magically fall into your lap; you need to help create them by sparking a reaction. All those crazy-rich CEOs in the world didn’t get where they are by taking the safe route. They weren’t afraid to put their whole lives into something they created, even knowing that it might not pay off in the end. The most important lesson I have learned is not to be afraid of failure. My professor once said, “Failure is fabulous. You will never get over your fear of failing until you fail. And once you fail, you can’t go anywhere but up.” He wished us all big, public failures early in life. And today, I wish the same for all of you.  
3. Live creatively. Write, paint, draw, cook, dance. Express yourself. Try new things. You never know what you may fall in love with. And who knows, maybe you’ll create a masterpiece that will live forever.

I’m not saying I do all these things, but I’ve been trying to make an active effort in my life to become someone that will change the world in some way. I probably won’t solve world conflicts, or be the next Picasso, but I know that I want my life to have a meaning, a purpose.

If we’re lucky enough, maybe we’ll find our passions early in life. Maybe we’ll find the message that’s going to be written on our tombstones before we get there. That way, all we need to do is work backwards.

Wishing you all lives filled with purpose. :)

Musings in a quarter-life crisis

I’m having one of those days.

You know those days when everything is held together but it all seems to be falling apart? Or when you feel like you’re standing still and life is just flying past you?

I don’t like these days, but I guess they are necessary.

Because without them, I’d probably be nowhere.

These days give me a sense of urgency.

Time is running out.

Stop standing.

Move.

Go anywhere.

But just move.

Sometimes I can’t believe that twenty years of my life have gone by. What have I done? How have I made any difference in the world? In someone’s life?

Why is it that when I look back, everything just seems like a big blur of the same routine?

Routine.

I hate routines.

I promised myself I would never fall into a routine.

Life feels like we’re all standing on conveyer belts. For some time, I move at the same pace as others. We develop a great relationship – one of those we’re-on-the-same-page type of friendships. They never seem to last though. Or they do, but the conveyer belts are different. The paces change, and we drift. Drift into new relationships. And throughout life we just keep drifting.

For some reason, lately it feels like everyone is moving faster. Faster. Passing by. Leaving.

I don’t want to be left on my own.

Alone.

Lonely is a terrible feeling.