Odd dream I had last night. It was so eerie in almost every way. My past haunts me like a ghost streaks through the night. My fear is present in all my action.

Sitting on a bus each morning started. In the presence of strangers, I sat in the bitter cold. I shivered to try to keep warm, but alas it was no use. The darkness before the break of dawn surrounded me. I try to sleep, but never with any success. I just sit there and watch the world go by. The background reminds me of a life I'll never have; from the very depth of poverty to the glimmering life of the extremely rich. My mind wanders like a child lost in a field. The life, the year brought was not full of all the promise I once saw.

Four years later. The present day. Life moves in every fleeting moment like the wind. I stop, and think only sometimes of a past, which is so chilling. It shapes me like a block of clay then consumes me. All I know, everything I stand for, every feeling of love, hate, desire, passion, friendship, it flashes before me like a bolt of lightning. Life is a journey of discovery yet a project for stability. Stability of one's self is the pre-requisite for helping others in their journey. Self-actualization taken to a higher level of understanding throughout life.

Ostracism. An action I am so greatly against, yet I fear the most. Fear of the unknown is lack of understanding. That not only lack of knowledge but ignorance of a desire for that knowledge is what truly drives hatred at its very worse. It reminds me of a something William James once said, but now is even more true that, "A man's Social Self is the recognition which he gets from his mates. We are not only gregarious animals, liking to be in sight of our fellows, but we have an innate propensity to get ourselves noticed, and noticed favorably, by our kind. No more fiendish punishment could be devised, were such a thing physically possible, than that one should be turned loose in society and remain absolutely unnoticed by all the members thereof. If no one turned round when we entered, answered when we spoke, or minded what we did, but if every person we met "cut us dead," and acted as if we were nonexistent things, a kind of rage and impotent despair would ere long well up in us, from which the cruellest bodily tortures would be a relief; for these would make us feel that, however bad might be our plight, we had not sunk to such a depth as to be unworthy of attention at all."

I then see myself again on the bus. As I sit there in a drowsy gaze, I arrive at my destination. I look out and feel the morning due of dawn upon me. That moisture only comforts me for a few fleeting moments. The bus pulls away in a cloud of dust. My eyes pause, and then look ahead to my pathway. Oh, how everyday I dreaded making that same walk again. My heart pounded like a war-drum. Indifferent to the entire situation entered my mind. A tug-o-war of feelings buried in my subconscious. Why was I here?

The previous year was in my mind, was like a blur of happiness, yet rock bottom realization that we live in a society of hate that I thought through isolation and similarities I could escape.

That summer. It changed my life. The morning calm interrupted in sadness, confusion, rage, but mostly fear. Would they come back for me and truly show their hate to me, rather than only leaving a symbol of it, on my home?

Cowards! To this very day I still live in fear that they might come back. But then that fear was truly evident in my life. I sat each night that summer looking out the back window in fear they would come back. Sleepless nights through paranoia and childhood fears through a symbol, a visual sign of hate, vandalism.

Yet through that summer of fate, I thought I stood at a door of opportunity open for me to walk into. It was slammed in my face over the course of that year.

Life is funny in that way. I look for doors in all the wrong places. Then I finally realize the door was closed all along but I was too blind to see it.

Humans by nature are social creatures. They need stability like a child needs his mother. When social groups and stigmas form, they are hard to break. Almost like a wolf pack, a tight knit group of humans is a hierarchy for order, security, yet inconclusiveness. When a new wolf enters the pack, she is almost never accepted especially when the pack has grown up together since youth. Alienation is evident and thus a fragile self-image could be ripped to sheds by this hungry pack.

I walk into the room like a scared cat in a room full of strangers. I hear the voices whisper, though silent, I feel as though they are screaming straight at my face. The curses are like a knife stabbing through my heart. The place I had once looked for, as an escape from a society of hatred had become a prison of ostracism. From that point on, the person who I once thought I was was lost in a maze inside my head.

I knew then that was the end. I had to change the world. Even a people that were supposed to be accepting and peaceful had its hypocrites. I learned then never to judge a person by its cover or its race, or creed. No matter how oppressed they maybe, there are still people that think they are better then others and there is nothing a person can do to change their minds. One can only change one's self and how one reacts to a given situation. Sad I realized this when I was 13 and how hateful the world can be even within supposedly sheltered situations. I knew I had to leave isolation and move back into a world to truly make a difference.

Hypocrisy. A word with so many meanings behind it. Yet, since it is such a human action and feeling, it is present in each person no matter how strong willed they are.

Life is truly an enigma but also a constant journey towards nirvana. Through finding one's purpose, this is experienced. I knew through my experience of ostracism that I had to make it so no one else would have the same experiences I had. Thus my life's mission began.

Leaving the room, I returned on my long bus journey home, this time for good. There would be no more long mornings in the bitter cold. Yet returning home, I was returning to the hate I feared the most and watched out for from my window each night. Only now did I come home with the knowledge that hate comes in many forms, but I couldn't escape from it all no matter how hard I tried. I had to face it straight on in order to overcome it. I knew in my mind this might take a great deal of time but like sands in an hourglass are infinite, my time was just that, but I knew it wouldn't take that long. Step by step my fear would be overcome and I would show the world just what I stand for; acceptance and peace. I cried for my mind and heart are both certain of my duty, awareness but also change of a society no matter how small the transformation might be.

But with transformation must come the ability to overcome fear, which is the root of ignorance. Fear is like a weed when one tries to pull it out, one only gets the top and the weed grows back like a pest. Only through hard work can the weed's roots be removed. But to get fear at the roots, one most look at the causes of fear and why people fear. Fear at its root is linked to conformity and fear of difference. That's the underlying reason why, according to Thoreau in his famous work, "Civil Disobedience", "mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines." Humanity becomes blind due to fear. They are afraid not to conform to being good and thus ostracism is evident within society. Though, conformity would be my worst obstacle in my path towards enlightenment.

Moving home also brought back the people I once dreaded. But how could they be worse than the people back in the room? I decided to just go with the flow and swim gently through my next year. Surprisingly, that year turned out not to be as bad as I thought it would be moving back into my old environment. I developed a friendship with someone who seemed to understand and accept unconditionally. Yet as fate had it, I had to leave her after the year was up. This was truly devastating to me, like a balloon being deflated it took all the will out of me. As a person I become very attached to people when I am truly fond of them. Even though I knew I could visit her, I knew it couldn't be much more than once a year. This fact broke my spirit, but somehow I went on, like a soldier in the night, I went on.

Yet another new situation I entered, like a soldier following the lead of his commanding officer I was unaware of what to expect. Yet I entered the situation with an open mind as I do every situation. The situation at first seemed to go well. I was on a high. My world did though seem to crash down as quickly as it seemed to go up. My internal support, my family was deteriorating as rapidly as I could snap my fingers. With just a few words, life changed and I never saw it coming.

I truly thought my family was invincible like a rock that never crumbled, but it did. I was totally oblivious to the fact that the rock wasn't made of diamond but of chalk that easily came a part. I was so caught up in my own internal world that the outside was blurred and there was no way I could change it. I felt helpless like a child in infancy, and I felt as though I had no control over my life. Control is one thing I crave like honey from hive the bee needs this for survival and so do I. That honey, I lost. It was gone, kaput. Having control over one's life help's one gain stability and at this point I lost it. I drowned myself in despair, lost in a pool of a broken family. I locked myself into isolation for the first few days, not wishing to deal with the world and its cruelties. Even after returning from that isolation, I was not the same person as I once was. My work in every aspect of life that I once excelled at was now, sub par. I was going towards the road of failure, the one thing, I feared and still fear the most. Whether one succeeds or fails in life is the value of which others look upon them. To leave that legacy that impact on the world is what I strive for, whether it be as minuscule as touching only one life, or changing the course of a nation, this is my goal. Yet not to achieve this would be total disaster, like that of Pearl Harbor or 9/11. But in my mind I knew, this was only one setback, on the long road of life and towards my goal of self-actualization. It shaped me, as did every thing else in my past to this point. Fear shouldn't drive a person, but ambition should. Ambition overpowers and consumes the truly good and sincere people of the world, not fear. This realization helped on the race over this hurdle in the race called life.

Another summer pasted, and a new year started like the flower blooms and so did hope renew itself. The eyes of all were upon me, or so it seemed like it in the mess of my mind, to perform and out do myself from the previous year. Yet another friend, from the most unlikely place found me that year. Her affects on my life are still profound to this day. She rehabilitated my hopes and dreams. She in some ways fashioned the person I am today. Her belief in my ability and the person, who I was and am, inspired me to the fullest degree. The things she taught me and what she still teaches to me, these lessons, these beliefs, these ideals, these dreams that both her and I share, are profoundly similar, yet unique which made and makes our relationship truly inimitable. Her love and understanding helped me justly overcome the demons that haunted my past, yet I dare not tell her of these demons even to this day. I don't know in my mind if its fear of what she'll think, or just my desire not to bring her into the larger trouble of my life. She has so much to deal with herself in her life, I feel as though it would be wrong to pull her into mine more than I already have. Confusion engulfs me. I long to tell her of my admiration. Her similarities are striking, and understanding, enduring. Her words tender and glowing brighter than a summer afternoon. How I long so greatly to tell her of my past. How is she different from the ones I choose to trust before? My love is never-ending like a rainbow in the spring. The warmth, she radiates is a true sense of comfort. Paranoia consumes me into a bottle as I float through a lonely sea of despair. My respect for her is as immense as the respect I have for God himself, which is the reason I try not to show her weakness, which is in my own mind. My love for thee my friend will never fail, this I know, for in all the time I've know you, thou has not failed me and I will reciprocate this gesture to the best of my ability.

I am a poor, wayfaring stranger, a traveling through, this world of woe. But there's no sickness, toil, nor danger, in this wide world, through which I roam. And truly to this world, I am as are we all strangers. Dreams and friendships change society from that of hatred and obscurity to that of hope, love and peace. As Abraham Maslow once said, "A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be at peace with himself." Through friendship and the ambition of fulfilling my dreams I have found true peace and nirvana within myself. And though life may have its perils and road bumps, the straight and narrow, though sometimes blurred in vision, is always certain: self-actualization and harmony.