Weird movie...

I'm 27. That is, in and of itself, completely unremarkable. Lots of people are 27. Millions, probably, at this very moment, and hurling around the sun for the 27th time. And, so it goes, you move on and become 28. And then 40. And then you play shuffleboard on a Carnival Cruise, complain to the Condo Association about the new neighbors and their noise, and cantankerously wait to be with Jesus. Or, something like that. Anyway, the point is, 27 ain't that big of a deal. Of course, contextually, 27 can mean quite a bit- in some countries and cultures, I'd be a tribal elder, a father of multiple children, a devoted husband who had married very early on, as was the custom. Or, given the state of most of the world right now, I'd probably be dead- be it disease, ethnic cleansing, war, or famine, I'd be a memory at best. More than likely I'd be fertilizer. That's hardly where I am trying to take this little exercise, so I'll leave that be for now, even though it is interesting to consider. No, for me, right now, I am a twenty seven year old man, living in Seattle, trying to sort through my ideas about equality, fairness, justice, commerce, family, education, friendship, spirituality, relationships, sexuality; I'm living each day, encountering scenarios and situations as a maturing and thoughtful 27 year old man. I do not have all (or many, as it turns out) of THE answers for the questions I see posed, but I do have responses and guesses that come from experience and luck that seem to get me a little closer to synthesizing thoughts and actions. I can't know the future of my life, but I can start to understand who I am on a fundamental level. I can't call all things black and white, but I'm getting better at navigating the grey seas. I never once dreamed that I would live through a phase of life where transition and uncertainty were mainstays, and where calm and unruffled composure and rock-solid resolve are abstract concepts. I naively believed that Life would simply happen, that it would require little to no work from me. Not to go into great detail now, but I think, for the first time really, that the last few weeks have truly shown me what it means to be alive.
I am realizing that the reason I feel so deeply about my fellow 27 year olds dying in Iraq is because I think death and destruction are such a waste of life and creation. I am realizing that my mad-cap plan to breed business-nonprofit hybrids isn't a silly notion I picked up somewhere along the line, but it is core to who I am developing and becoming. I am a 27 year old man, and I am embracing the chaos and the shrugged shoulders and the let downs and the dreams as my life.
Life Doesn't Just Happen. You have to grab it.
I am alive, it turns out, and hurtling straight toward 28.