Perspective

College is deceiving. It takes your entire world, and shrinks it into a little bubble that encompasses the town or city that the college is located in. Communication with the outside world is limited to a thin stream of media: a phone call from your parents, the occasional glance at the newspaper, reading an article online, watching the news on TV, an email to a high school friend, a picture in a textbook. Occasionally, we leave the bubble to experience something new. Whether it's going home for Thanksgiving, going to some other state to intern over summer, spending quality time at the beach with friends during spring break, or traveling to an exotic country over winter break, at the end of the day, like homing pigeons, we return to the safety of our campuses. Our problems shrink to focusing on doing well in school, having a good time, making close friends, preparing for the "real world". Slowly, from the moment we set foot as college students in our respective campuses, our minds are fed the illusion of the college life. Some enjoy the challenges of the classroom. Others enjoy the close proximity and availability of friends and companions. The venturous individuals choose to pursue experience and thrill of trying new things and challenging themselves. As a sign in my freshmen dorm stated: If it wasn't for academics, college would be the ideal life to live. But probably what shatters the college illusion (at least for me), is the poverty and the crime in Philadelphia. How many individuals have I come across who had asked me for 80 cents? How many people have I come across where I have looked down upon them due to their pitiful nature? How many times have I thought how hopeless these people seem to be?

I live in a college illusion. I enjoy the luxury of having friends living in close proximity to me and to have access to a number of amazing resources (including gyms, restaurants, libraries, etc.). My grades have risen to a high priority in my life and nearly all of my stress stems from academia and school work. I have to admit that when I go out with Diakonos, there are a number of individuals whom I continue to feel a sad hopelessness due to their lack of interest to rise out of their positions. But every so often, I meet an individual who truly has the spark of life within them. I see it in their eyes and hear it in their voices, Give me a chance and it is then that my college illusion shatters. To see people who are in true and desperate need, who seek for an opportunity or a chance to improve their living situations, who have not become apathetic to their situations, it is those individuals that encourage me not to give up serving the poor and the weak. It's those individuals who give me the encouragement that there is still hope among those in need and that there are still people striving to live with purpose. And it is this encouragement that allows me to look at my own life with a larger perspective; to see the chaos of harsh reality: natural disasters, hunger, war.

And when I am encouraged in such a way, my problems don't seem nearly as important anymore. I begin to more clearly see how blessed I am and how God has provided me with so many things. I get a glimpse of the world outside college and I am reminded:

"Be very careful then, how you live - not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil." - Ephesians 5:15-16