Today, I felt more heartsick than I had in a very long time. I missed my family across the world, felt selfish thoughts about wanting them to miss me back, and shed a few tears while looking at pictures of their smiling faces. But after I had gotten over my phase of self-pity and wishing that I could hear them again, I realized it did me no good. I had gotten nowhere, only felt sorrier that I had made no difference in the time that I had left them. Where does that put me? I have thought nowhere for a long time, that I couldn't make any significance if I wasn't helping in a third world country, that I would continue to feel this way until I saw them again. That's not what the trip was meant to teach us. Yes, it's okay to miss them and feel sorry for yourself every once in a while, but the purpose of the trip? There is a bigger meaning that until now, I didn't even begin to think of. It's to send you further. Not keep you stationary, not put you in a place of pity or sorrow, but make you believe in your worth and ability to make a difference in the world. I thought that meant I had to be traveling, that I had to be working with foreign people and in a foreign country, but no.
It's to find the capacity within yourself to love, to have a purpose, to make a true difference.
Does that mean I will cease to think of the children and experiences that I found in Cambodia? No, not at all. I continue to think about them every day. It means that I will move on, that I will find another purpose in myself to give back to others, whether it be here in my own little bubble or in the massive, exciting world. Don't take this ability that you have for granted, because you'd be selling yourself short. This ability is in each and every one of us, and it only took me this long to truly realize that.
