wakeful dreams.

There is no shortage of events or attitudes in this world that can impart extreme pessimism and hopelessness in the best of us, with the greatest of ease. Last night I read an article about women in Haiti that due to there literally being no food available to most of the population, making cookies out of dirt and leaves to sell to their clients. Right now there is half-eaten food being tossed all over my house. I know that I don't have to spell out the dire need that so much of our world is in to anyone, I know that it is common knowledge that children are dying from completely preventable causes, but I find that when huge statistics are thrown out, the reality of the situation, even the urgency of the situation, loses its effectiveness on me because I can't imagine 50 million of anything.

Offering individual services are absolutely beneficial, and my hat goes off to anyone who is signing up to look the worst of the worst in the face and offer something, anything, whether it's a hard day's work, just sitting with someone who is grieving, or anything in between. My hat goes off especially to those, who even though they're not in the optimistic bubble of higher education, keep a youthful energy and dream about them that one would think would have no choice but to fade with time. 

All of this to say that what I saw in the last week, competing in the Global Social Entrepreneurship Competition at UW, blew me out of the water, and although those minds are a fraction of the greater population, they are strong and brave and will prevail. Business plans that consisted of feeding India's poor with full meals that only cost the consumer 10 cents, using SMS technology in West Africa to identify the 33% of counterfeit drugs that are killing people every day, or trying to send children in Ghana to secondary school so that they can become our future's leaders and teachers and thinkers...don't need a competition to give validity to their mission, and have the every confidence of all who listened to them, even for a minute, that they will succeed. 

There are a lot a lot a lot a lot a lot of ways to allow light to shine through in this existence, and on this particular morning, I'm choosing to not give so much credit to the greed and hatred and loneliness that causes so much strife. Maybe that can be for tomorrow. Maybe not.

Lindsey