Within

I'm amazed that about one year ago, I was already planning my 21st birthday and how excited I was to finally be legal. Even though it didn't matter since I had a fake ID. I couldn't wait to reach that point in my life. Now, I'm thinking of what good school I want to go to, probably Stern, where I want to be after, my goals on traveling the world and learning and growing. These thoughts were always in the back of my head, but I never actually tried to pursue any of them.
I remember when it was right after passover at UCF when I decided I needed to give the rabbi in charge of this program a call. I realized when I was at the seder table at Chabad, with everyone not really even paying attention to the haggadah, that it was not the place for me. I was speaking to him for a while about the pros and cons of my staying or going. That was when he gave me a d'var Torah about the slavery during pesach. He said if the Jews were never actually freed from Egpyt, in time society would eventually let them go. However, they wouldn't have been able to receive the Torah and been declared the Jewish nation if Moses never asked to 'let his people go'. Modernly, we would go on with life and not have that inner freedom that we received, just as if I never connected with my spiritual self, I would be in chains. He told me your freedom is within your beliefs...and now I see that :)