I think this is the best thing I have ever written

The people in this Yeshiva are amazing. Some have given up so much to sit and learn Torah. There are people here who have turned down jobs that would pay them very decent money and instead are sitting and learning. The people here are so dedicated to what they are doing that not much will stop them from their learning.
Something amazing happened on Friday. Well, Friday for us, Thursday for people in America. Lebron James scored 29 of the last 30 points for the Cavs as they upset the Pistons in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Finals. This could be the beginning of a long Cavs dynasty! This might have been the best game in NBA history! When I walked downstairs nobody here mentioned it. It was not even brought up in conversation by the people who were sitting and learning on Friday. I have a feeling that if I were still in Ann Arbor conversation on Friday would have been dominated by the Lebron-show.
Something else amazing happened on Friday. I said before that not much will stop people here from their learning, but sometimes you just cannot help but stop to marvel at HaShem's world. Baruch walked into the Beit Midrash on Friday afternoon with his beautiful one-year old child and everyone stopped learning. Everyone. Every man in the room had a huge smile on his face as they saw one of the many miracles HaShem chooses to show openly every day, the gift of life. Children are amazing. I remember being at my grandparent's home when my little cousin came to America. I remember the smile on my grandfather's face as he picked up his grandson and time stopped. It was one of those experiences you never forget. It is so amazing to see a grandfather interact with his grandson. To see his time-worn face jump back 60 years and realize he would have lived his whole life just for this moment. I remember my grandmother always telling me the story of my birth. She says that when my mother gave birth to me the whole family was in the room. I didn't cry. I just slowly looked at everyone in the room as if I already knew them and was just saying hello to long-lost friends. I still don't believe it. I just think it was one of those moments for her when she saw HaShem smile at her and realized how blessed she was. My mother always tells me about how much my father cared for me as a child. When I was just born my father couldn't sleep because he was so nervous that something would happen to his precious son. He would check if I was breathing in the middle of the night just to reassure himself that everything was all right. I think he was reminding himself of how lucky he was to be a father. I guess being a father is one of those life-altering experiences that I do not understand, yet. The love humankind has for a child is something that I feel is deep within each individual, in the core of who they are. I remember going to the JRC for Shabbat dinners and seeing 20 girls wait in lines to hold the small children who were there. The guys too, but girls have a much deeper connection. It amazed me.
People ask me why in Judaism there are laws not to do X, because it will lead to Y. When in reality X will only lead to Y if you let it. They ask, "Why can't you just be a strong enough person and say no to Y?" Another amazing thing happened on Friday. I was talking with one of my fellow students here who I found out really liked Shel Silverstein poems. He could quote many of them by heart. When I was younger I also read 3 of his books but I didn't memorize the poems, I can't even tell you the names of all 3 books. He started quoting some of the poems and for some reason before he finished each poem I was transported 10 years into the past and I knew how the poem ended before he finished. I truly think that the human mind is an amazing machine. It's not that we cannot remember information, we just don't know how to retrieve all of the information that is stored in the endless depths of our brains. When this fellow student started quoting poems it triggered something in my brain and I was flooded with memories from 10 years ago. In Ann Arbor there are many crazy activities that college kids do. There are so many kids at U of M that go out many nights a week and get wasted, end up doing things they regret, but go out again and again and again. It is not so simple to say, "I am not going to be like everyone else." I believe that any person can conquer the things they choose to conquer, but they can only conquer things that they know need to be conquered. In Ann Arbor you are surrounded by people who do things that I feel they shouldn't. I also think that the things occurring around you get stored in your brain in places where you cannot easily retrieve the information and will affect you on a subconscious level. Peer pressure doesn't trick someone into doing something they vehemently oppose, but rather it tricks people into forgetting why they didn't want to do those things in the first place. Their souls are screaming at them not to go out again and get wasted, but they cannot retrieve the information that tells them why they shouldn't. I think this is the answer to why Judaism says not to do X, because it could lead to Y. Just like people know that they shouldn't input smoke into their bodies to keep their lungs healthy, and shouldn't input unhealthy food into their mouths to keep their bodies healthy, I think that in order to keep your brain healthy you should only input healthy thoughts. That is one of the reasons I am so happy to be in Yeshiva. Instead of inputting unhealthy thoughts and images into my brain from Ann Arbor I am inputting HaShem's wisdom. Instead of taking a break to think about life after spending all day going to school or work, talking about Lebron's out-of-this-world performance, and watching 2 hours of television, I would rather take a break from thinking about life.
The way people are tricked into living in Ann Arbor pains me. It is so sad to see innocent girls become corrupted by frat parties and stupid boys, instead of enjoying things that matter. I remember going to the Bahamas for spring break in 12th grade. I remember people getting wasted in order to enjoy their evenings. Thinking back it pains me that people choose to do things where they first need to alter their chemical structure to enjoy it, instead of doing things that give them pleasure that they feel in their core. It pains me that people choose to cheat on women and get drunk instead of choosing to build a family and raise children. Do they not realize that if they wait until they are 30 to have children they might not be alive to see their great-grandson come into this world? Do they really think that it is worth it to spend 5-10 years partying and "not growing up" at the expense of the infinite joy of witnessing that? It pains me that when I talk to people in America and ask them how they are doing or what they did that day, they respond by saying they went to work, came home, watched TV, saw some friends... I would much rather hear them say, "I had a great day! I discovered something amazing about the world! I understand X so much better than I used to! I spent time working on myself and growing as a person!"
I think that one of the reasons why religious Jews get married young is because they spend all day thinking about how they can best live life instead of just enjoying the moment. They realize that although it might be fun to spend 3 hours talking about Lebron and getting wasted, since they take so much time to think about where their lives are headed they understand why getting married and starting a family is so much more worthwhile. I am not saying that basketball is evil, but I am saying there are so many things I would rather be doing than watching sports. I understand that by choosing to live this way I am causing people, especially my family, hardship. But this is the life I choose. I could never go back to "Ann Arbor" when I have experienced how HaShem wants me to live. This doesn't mean that I am severing my ties with my "past life." This doesn't mean I don't care for all the people who I grew up with. This doesn't mean I don't care for my family.
I wish my parents could understand how much I love them and how lucky we are to have each other. I wish they would stop running through life and worrying all the time about everything. I wish they realized that everything was going to be fine. I wish they realized that they have a son who loves them more than anything in this world. Who is having the time of his life discovering what is important to him in order that he can live his life to the best of his abilities. I wish they realized that they have a daughter who works so hard in school and will become an amazing woman. I wish they understood that they have another son that even though he doesn't always listen will grow up and understand how lucky he is to have the parents he does. I wish they understood how lucky they are to have a healthy family with all of their parents alive and well. I wish they stopped looking at the negative things in their lives like the fact that I am on the other side of the world and Zack is leaving to go to college in Indiana, and Emily is also leaving home. I wish they recognized like I do how lucky we are to have each other even though we are all leading our own lives in our own ways down our own paths. Because even though we are going to end up in different places in life we all came from the same place and me and my brother and my sister will never forget where we came from. We came from the same home, and that place will never leave our hearts. You will never leave our hearts.