Waiting for my food, the chatter of the restaurant a pleasant numbing white noise of mingled conversations and clinking silverware, I begin to read the newspaper. Headlines leap at me, strong summarizations over deeper full story continued across the fold and inside. While I continue to read, an urge slowly crawls into the base of my mind.

The urge to underline - to emphasize certain words, key phrases – to write witty observations in the margins, to draw mustaches and pointy Victorian goatees on black and white photographs of men and women alike. In short, an urge to act.

It’s not revolutionary to write in the margins; beard drawing is downright juvenile. Yet I cherish this impulse, this aberrant feeling. I imagine later readers of the paper examining my scrawling, contemplating my additions. It’s a tempting and seductive idea – that even these, the most trivial of actions can make a difference.

Anymore, it’s a typical rationalization. Social action – no matter what cause one supports – in the decades since the heydays of the Peace Corps has gradually morphed. Service has changed into donations – the incessant postage-paid demands of nonprofits filling mailboxes and draining wallets – yet now it has dissipated further. Now it appears that our desire for social action is fulfilled by clicking a website button, a putting a catchy bumper sticker on our car, or simply wearing a lapel pin.

These things are not without value. They do have an effect; they raise awareness, raise funds. Yet they are political editorials rather than cast votes; they remind me of the adage: “If you didn’t vote, you have no right complaining.”

We write a check, press a button, and think we’ve actually done something worthwhile. That we’ve acted to change the world with the scribble of a pen, the click of a mouse. Now, finally, I realize.

So I write a scribbled note – not in the margins, to be closed between pages and forgotten, but on a notecard, placing it where I can’t help but see it, where I cannot possibly avoid it. I write.

“Volunteer at a soup kitchen this weekend.”

I realize now that I haven’t acted yet.

But I will.