How are you to know?

So I have always loved quotes. You know the things famous or brilliant people say that are written down just to be inspiring. I have always loved reading different quotes from different people.

What I do on a daily basis is I hop from facebook page to facebook page just to read the quotes section. I actually was doing it one day and I saw that someone I knew and loved actually quoted me, like in a serious way. I thought this to be funny because I know that I'm not truly quotable.

However, most of the time these famous and brilliant people are talking about doing things, like following your heart or starting a revolution. Don't waste time, live your life, don't do the things you don't want to do.

This is what came to my mind. If you don't go through hard times, if you don't become marginalized, if you don't work the terrible jobs, if you don't understand hardship, if you don't read the great minds of history, if you don't know what's truly going on in your world, how in the world are you supposed to do anything great? How are you supposed to be something great or start a revolution if all you do is sit around and laugh, and get drunk, and 'live' life?

The reality is that the people who we often quote, Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Theresa, or John F. Kennedy all went through hardship. They all were in stressful situations with stressful people. They all dealt with death and destruction. They saw something though, something different. They saw hope, and this hope is something that we seem to miss.

We see our world in shambles and we pick up a shovel and plant a tree, or a twenty dollar bill and go to the gap store and by a red shirt. We are to busy living our lives to actually make any impact on the world. And we want to be revolutionaries?

Revolutionaries were smart, they were people who understood their world and saw something missing, hence the revolution. And by their world I mean their immediate world.

I was talking to a friend in the car yesterday and I told her I didn't want to change the world, I just wanted to live my life. She replied "But that's how you'll change the world, by living your life."

I realized that I can't change the world unless I start loving the people around me and helping them live their life. I must become aware of my world to know how to change it. I must be aware of my community to see what needs to be changed.

How else am I to become anything or impact anyone?