The Journey of a Thousand Miles begins with a Single Step

So it's been a few days since my first entry, and I still haven't a clue of how to set forth on this journey that I committed myself to. I've borrowed some random religious texts, and have yet to actually open them. As a full time law student, my job has been to read long ass books, suck in their information and spit them back out. I retain a lot more than I thought I could, but still not nearly enough. The idea of reading some more large texts on my few weeks of freedom, is becoming more and more daunting, like homework you put off until Sunday night. To top it off, we are talking about thousand year old texts that have defined the lives of so many. They are so intimidating. I haven't a clue about how to go about reading anything of such esteem and actually processing the information or retaining it for my own benefit. I don't want to take a step back, but I'm frightened to take a step forward.

Life for me thus far has been nothing short of amazing, and a bed of roses compared to most people I know. I have spent my entire life in Ellicott City, MD with the exception of living about 30 minutes away for school. For those of you not familiar with the area, it was recently named the second best place to live by Money magazine, and is located in one of the wealthiest counties in our country. Where I went to high school, it was not a question of going to college, but where you were going to college. I spent a lot of my time in high school and middle school being depressed because I didn't "fit in". It wasn't until I got to college that I realized just how amazing I had it. I was shocked that people actually paid their own way, and didn't have great parents like mine to support them. My college education and experience has been the possibly the greatest gift I have ever received. It has shaped me into the person I am, someone who wants to go back in time and slap the emo right out of my younger self. It still insane for me to think about. How every night I have somewhere to sleep, food to eat, way more clothes than I need, and an amazing support system to turn to; all the while you can walk down the street from my house in Baltimore, and find tons of homeless people who have none of that. It baffles me to think, of what I possibly could have done to have it so good, while people with more drive and more intelligence are sleeping on the streets.

The sad part of growing up, where I grew up, is that we are taught to believe that the homeless got themselves there. That they were lazy. That they gave into drugs, etc. etc. We all know that's far from the truth. If we all trace it back, to how we got where we got, for the most part it is a matter of your birth rite. Being born where and to who you were born to. After all, how can you pull yourself up from the boot straps, if you haven't got access to the shoe store. This single concept in itself, has always been proof to me, that there is definitely something out there, bigger than ourselves.

In Hinduism, what you have in your present life is determined but what you did in your past life. To me, this has always made sense. But I've always wondered, how other people see it? How does one explain the great disparity in circumstances of being born to one mother as opposed to another? This is what I'd like to answer with my first step. I've spent countless hours studying, analyzing, and arguing things such as institutionalized racism and capitalism, which can explain the disparity in our country on it's surface. This disparity in our socioeconomics is what brought me to law school, and has pushed me to a career in which I pray I might be able to make a tiny, minuscule morsel of a difference in the gap between the rich and poor. Now I want to find out what's behind why we are born into what we are. If you have any other perspectives, or would like to tell me what you believe, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE don't hesitate to do so. Comments are always welcome (just be nice :))!