I want to change the world; I want America and democratic, liberal values to win; I want myself and everyone around me to flourish. I now realize, as ever, that my best chance to do so requires sacrifice in the old-fashioned spirit. That is to say, more concretely, away from the Internet. The technological tool of this age is a red herring of sorts, a siren song to me. If I am to ever maximize its value, I must first look inward. I must sit and stare, alone in a room, until my head is ready to explode -- let it explode.

What hours lost, what time not spent crafting myself from clay in the shape of those great and ennobling? How I wish now and, indeed, always have wished to walk the trail that's theirs; not that I may reach some destination, but that I may feel the sensation under my feet, struggling toward it.

Courage, fidelity, duty, etc.: those virtues the old masters spoke so highly of surely apply to me as host and constituent part of the human spirit. If I dare seek my soul to fly, I must love a higher love; I must inhabit the realm of possibilities; I must lose myself in the forest where truth hunts and where one hunts truth, but neither can catch the other. It's the negative capability, the systematic derangement of the senses, the fine frenzy rolling that I search for. To begin, I need only ask, "Where is my mind?"

That I ever felt it possible to join the cacophonous crowd online and shout the loudest or felt it worth trying in the first place, I am frankly embarrassed. For the dual benefit of quality introspection and becoming someone worth paying attention to, one must be quiet. One must be deathly still. I used to know that -- when did I forget? Only unmoving and mute may I learn myself and the heart and therefore learn how to move the universe.