I want to save the world.

I want to save the world.

I can't remember the first time I had this thought. I remember it was before high school. I remember that when I moved in eighth grade, whenever my friends at my old school were sniping at each other, they charged each other to be nice in my name. "Be nice" was my catch phrase. "Mom" was my nickname.

Around my senior year, someone asked me what I wanted to save the world from. "Nuclear war. Environmental destruction. Global warming. Hate. Anger. Sickness. Pain. You know. All that."

"So you really want to heal the world."

Yeah.

There's an episode of West Wing when the President (Bartlett for Pres 2020) wants to include in his State of the Union that he wants to cure cancer. His pollster, Joey Lucas, one of my favorite characters, says through her signing interpreter, "If he called us here to tell us he'd cured cancer, that would be nice. But he says he wants to cure cancer. I say, Is this the first time he's had that thought?"

I say this to myself all the time.

I want to save the world. Yeah, is this the first  time you've had this thought?

I also have the image in my head of a story I heard as a child about a man walking down the beach throwing beached clams back into the ocean. His companion says, "Look how many there are. Do you really believe you can make a difference." He replies, "I made a difference to that one."

Sometimes I think that's all I can do. And sometimes I think it's enough. And sometimes I don't.

I want to do big work. In my heart and in my soul, I feel called to do something important, something that matters. The kind of work that heals the world. I don't know what it is. I don't know if I'm avoiding it because I'm afraid or if I'm not seeing that what I'm already doing is enough.

I don't know.

I just want to save the world. No, it's not the first time I've had this thought.

Hold me to it, okay?