What this is

    Over the semester I want to explore hope. Specifically, my own for the world and the future. This endeavor will be meandering, paradoxical, and inconclusive. I want to chronicle the heightening of aliveness--the crafting of a life I'd be excited to greet in the morning. I want to devote daily attention to embodying love and calm. Those states of being I want to archive, ponder, strengthen, come to blows with, and ultimately write about for a school assignment. But before I begin explaining why it depends on the morning or what love and calm look like in my life, I wanted to address the numerous privileges affording me the time to consider meaning in my life. 

    Most people globally have neither the time nor money to ponder. Arising in the morning and thinking "what do I want to do today" is limited to people who have options. Food, shelter, clothing, all of these factors are taken care of, so I get to ruminate on what I want. What I need for survival takes a backseat to what I crave for fulfillment. For most of human history survival has been the end all be all. Securing enough resources to not starve was enough. Now (as a middle-class citizen of the U.S) I have ample resources for survival, and I no longer feel like enough.  

    Apart from the contemporary western privileges of ample food and shelter I have the specific privileges of inhabiting a white cis-gendered male body in a country whose institutions favor these identities. My grandparents were able to secure federal loans to start their own small businesses, eventually earning enough to put my parents through college. My parents were unobstructed by racial biases in their post-collegiate job searches and made careers in fields that could support a family. I was born into a financially stable two-parent household with a strong emphasis on education--as a white man the road could not be more paved for my 'success'. 

    I bring focus to these influential factors from my personal and familial history not to make anyone else feel lesser, but to highlight a guiding question in this semester-long exploration. How interconnected is weaponizing my many privileges and attaining greater fulfillment in my daily life? I've had run-ins with Buddhist philosophies in the past, as I will get into later, and a key tenet of the Buddha's teachings is that one must not add to the suffering of other sentient beings. In other words, you can alleviate your own suffering through continual service to others. I enjoy this idea, and I've seen it come true in my life so far, but I'm trying to figure out what my services will be. How, as a full-time student in Iowa City, do I find avenues for transforming my personal privileges into advantages for marginalized identities? How can me getting a foot in the door help others circumvent the door in the first place? 

    I don't, however, want to let this guiding question of weaponizing privilege be the only parameter for exploring hope, calm, and love. I want to expound upon tiny wonders, linger in spiritual paths, write about global problems, and, of course, embody the weaponizing of privilege. I don't want this project to be intellectual or academic, I want to carry my ideas with me into the world. I want to dedicate myself. So, to you, reader, whoever you are, I say welcome, and thank you for being exactly who you are, I hope to show you just who it is that I am.