This past weekend, I decided it was time for me to get high.

I had gotten close to it before, gotten to the brink of experiencing that focused, crazy and creative energy that some of my friends had told me about, but I had never let the substance fuse into my blood and direct my mind — at least not completely.

Indeed, when I inhaled the thick puffs this weekend, I let them wash over me and settle on my nerves. I invited them to stay inside my lungs and boil until they were ready to be exhaled.

The thing is, though, the smoke is still there inside me, burning. I’m still high. I haven’t exhaled yet.

So I’ll do it now.

I should tell you that the smoke wasn’t, of course, from a communal bowl of fired-up grass, a pot pipe or personally-wrapped cigarette. I almost wish that it was because, in many ways, it would be easier to deal with those things.

Rather, the smoke was the shadowed facts of this world we live in, the product of sadness set on fire in front of me to extinguish with my own hands.

And yours.

This past weekend I attended, along with 14 others from Western, the Habitat for Humanity Youth Leadership Conference in Chicago. There we learned about how we can improve our organization and how we can help people in need of decent, affordable housing.

But we learned more than that. We learned that in our world one in six people — that’s one billion, or three times the population of the United States — lives on less than one dollar a day.

I should rephrase that. They survive on less than one dollar a day. They don’t live, at least not in the way that every human should. And around the world, only 15 percent of women can own the title to their own home, meaning a woman can be legally evicted if her husband dies, no matter how many children they have. She can become homeless in the blink of an eye.

In our own country, millions of people live in substandard or unaffordable housing, which means that we as Americans are not immune to poverty, despite priding ourselves on our riches, our economic prowess and our ingenuity.

Do you smell the smoke?

Habitat for Humanity, long known for providing affordable homes (they’re not free — families and individuals pay for their homes over time), has begun a new branch of its mission to eradicate poverty housing. With the idea that everyone deserves to live in simple, decent and affordable homes, Habitat is advocating more than ever social change through legislation and education. Changing the world, they understand, begins with changing minds.

If you want to be a part of the movement or learn more about how you can help, please e-mail me and the folks at Western’s Habitat at habitat@wku.edu.

We’d love to share a bowl with you.