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Describe a time when you felt sorry for someone.

Sometimes I wish I could have seen somebody about four hours before I actually see them. It's like zooming out with a camera so you get a better perspective. What put that smile on your face? What wiped away the one you had earlier? What has heaped on your shoulders and pulled your head down?

When we were in Boston this summer, one of my favorite things to do was just watch people. I love doing that when I travel different places: it reminds me of how alike we are, regardless of where we're from. People everywhere are trying to better themselves, get through each day, raise their families, find love, discover something worth smiling at - these inate desires are universal. Unfortunately pain is universal as well. Every day people see death, lose friends, experience disappointment, hear bad news, give bad news. And to the strangers around them, it's just another day. Or so they think - no doubt those strangers are hiding something with a blank stare as well.

The "blank stare" is the hallmark of public transportation, and nowhere else is that more evident than in big cities. Traffic in Boston is hellacious, so smart people use buses or the subway, or just walk. By the end of our four days there, we were familiar with ("pros at" would be a generous overstatement) the subway, or the "T". On one of our last days, we were on a crowded bus on our way back to our hotel. Everyone on it was tired; the ride was silent as people leaned against windows with closed eyes or quietly watched the buildings crawl past. At one stop a woman got on and sat next to me, and I could tell she'd been crying. I wondered what had happened to her that day, what had crushed her blank face, caused her to crack the stoic front and let the hurt run down her cheeks. I had on my "I'm not in my small midwest town so I should keep to myself" face, and I thought I should just leave her alone. But after a little while I pulled out from my bag a left-over napkin from lunch and offered it to her. She smiled and declined, and soon she got off the bus.

I still have the napkin, taped in my journal as a reminder of the humanity that surrounds me. Everybody has a story; everyone has a hurt. It's good to remember that as I interact with people on a daily basis. Before you act, think about what that person experienced over the past four hours. Give everyone a little room to act in response to their situations. Be gentle; you don't know who may be near their breaking point. You may be the nudge that pushes them over or away from the edge.

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When I was eight, I had such a definite idea of how my life would play out. My uneventful childhood would cross into an uneventful adulthood. I wouldn't have to worry about money or watching my weight - somehow all of that would be magically taken care of without me worrying about them too much. I would live next door to my parents (apparently my neighbors were planning on moving out) and host family Thanksgiving at my house (my sister would take care of Christmas). When we were old enough (in ten years), my at-the-time boyfriend and I would get married, and I would be a pilot, like my dad. I was a church-going, sword-drill-winning Christian because everybody at my school was a church-going, sword-drill-winning Christian (they had a one-up on me, though, because they all went to AWANA and I didn't), and my faith would be that simple probably forever. I tolerated my younger siblings but was pretty sure we'd have nothing to do with each other when we grew up. (My sister once told me that I'd be the one in our family with the tattoos and face piercings. In our small world that was the epitome of rebellion, and after that I swore we'd never be friends again.) And with any luck, my hell of practicing piano for twenty minutes every day would soon be coming to a close: I had told my parents and teacher that I was finished, and finished I intended to be.

When you're eight, you don't realize how much of a life you have stretching before you. If you get your timing right and die on your eighty-fifth birthday, you watch over 31,000 days. And while I was busy sitting at my desk in third grade, writing out the names of my future kids, I had no idea that I'd seen less than three thousand of those days, several hundred of which I don't remember. Oh, sure, I understood the broad outline: school/college, married, kids, work, dead. But I had no idea what I'd see during - and even in between - those stages.

In several months I will be twenty-one, but sometimes I feel like that eight-year-old, planning my life. "After graduation, I'll get a job at the school where I do my student-teaching, and after I get some experience I'll go somewhere else and eventually wind up where my passion leads me." But I have to remember the expectations I had at eight and how differently my life has turned out. Frets about money and how the world perceives me are on my mind almost hourly. With their newly-remodeled kitchen, my neighbors probably aren't leaving any time soon; but that's alright with me, since I'm not planning on living in my home state forever anyway. I have felt something yanking on my heart (which I'm pretty sure is my Isa telling me where He wants me), and it's definitely not as a pilot. My relationship with church and "Christians" has not been the best, particularly in the last few years. With bad experience after bad experience with Pharisees masquerading as followers of Christ and churches that are based more on politics and finances than the Word of God, my view of much connected with ministry is backed by a little glare. I didn't foresee the situations when I'd sit in front of my mirror and say to my reflection, "What the hell are you doing?" I didn't imagine being more comfortable in a secular environment than I am at my religious university. When my dad said I'd be allowed to date at fourteen, I didn't think I'd be waiting until I was seventeen to actually start, and then reach a point after almost four years of not dating that it was fine, that I'm actually content to not have anybody, even though the books and movies say my "clock" is running out. (And I'm graduating two years from now and apparently college is one of the last prime places to meet a guy. So I've heard.) And I certainly didn't plan on my parents overriding my declaration to quit piano lessons; I eventually completed twelve years, and even three years after quitting, the first thing I do when I go home on breaks is play my piano for a solid hour - it's become so much a part of me, I can't imagine that I ever wanted to quit.

I've heard my entire life that life is short, but in the past week I've heard that it's long - very, very long. And I forget that when I look at where I am: within two years of jumping off one ledge onto another, very different one. All I can see right now is the gap that I'm about to leap; I can't see the plateau that I'm jumping to, with its new hills and crags and valleys to explore. (And now I'm sounding like a bad graduation speech.) I forget that I have so much life to live. In the grand scheme of things, I'm young and inexperienced and clumsy and a royal mess. How in the world can I, at twenty years old, expect to have things figured out and organized and under control? That's like handing a toddler a jacked-up car motor and saying, "Fix this, will you?" That's dumb.

Anyway. Exam week is coming up, which won't be half as bad as the week before exam week. Papers, books, analyses, quizzes....heaven preserve us.