I have always been a curious person, and I have never been afraid to ask why. When I was very young I was always questioning my parents about the most trivial things, and they always responded with a little chuckle followed by an obvious answer. However, around the first grade I started to ask serious questions, to which my parents didn’t know how to respond. I remember one specific occasion when my mom was putting me to bed and as she was leaving the room I asked, “Mom what’s the meaning of life?”. My mom stood there in stunned silence for a while, until she shook herself from the daze and replied “Honestly Nick I do not know, but I do know it’s time for bed”. For years following that moment,I was fascinated with discovering the purpose of my existence.

So I naturally turned to the source that millions have turned to, the Bible. Given my young age, I at first viewed this text literally and believed every passage to be fact. Then in middle school, my class started to learn about other cultures and the myths they created to explain how the world and universe worked. I was fascinated by the idea and read for hours about different cultures and their myths. After years of reading various mythological text books, novels, and plays, I came to realize that our “modern” religions could be classified as myths. It just depended on one’s point of view.

When I finally came to the conclusion that the religion, which for years I had believed to be true, may just be another mythical text, I was at an impasse, and I didn’t know what to think.  One of the main things that devastated my belief system was whether there was an afterlife. For months I thought and debated with myself on what would happen after death; however like the rest of mankind I have not found it out, but what I did realize is I could live on through my the legacy that I will leave behind.  However that wasn’t enough for me, I wanted  a legacy that when someone mentioned my name they would automatically know what I did in my life.

I had yet again reached another obstacle in my life: I couldn’t decide what I could do that would make such a positive impact on the world. For years I debated how I could change the world in such a positive manner, but it wasn’t until recently that I had a revelation. A few months ago I was thinking about this very topic when it hit me, I realized that I was approaching it from the wrong perspective. I realized that instead of thinking about what I like
and love to do and how that could change the world; I had to start thinking about what bothered me and how I could make those issues better. I started to think of things that bothered me left and right. In the end three topics really made an impact on me and are currently pushing me to do my best, so I can have the best chance of fixing them. The first issue is how poorly we are treating our earth. It really bothers me that a large number of people don’t seem to care that we are essentially killing our earth with pollution. It also aggravates me that people don’t realize we only have one earth, and once it’s gone we will have no other place to go. The second topic comes hand in hand with the first. It really annoys me how as a society we have come to accept fossil fuels as the only reasonable fuel source; all one has to do is look up in a sky and see a relatively infinite supply of energy that will leave no carbon footprint at all. The third and final issue that truly does bother me is a bit more complicated than the others, and it is how shady our government has become. What I mean by this is how our government officials are not making decisions in the name of the people any more, but instead they are listening to the special interest groups who give them the most money.

For the above reasons I look to the future with excitement and not fear, because I realize now that I can be someone who can help change the way we treat our environment, or someone who helps to reform the government. I now rest easier at night realizing that there is a possibility for me to do something great for this world, and a possibility for me to be remembered for years to come.