If you aren't where you want to be right now, don't sweat it. If you're in the wrong major, at the wrong university, in the wrong state, in the wrong country, find a nice quiet place for the next few minutes.

We've got some talking to do, and I'd rather you not have to put up with a professor talking about economic yield or a roommate's bad techno that's on a constant loop.

Leave wherever you are and go to the brightest, sun-drenched place you can find. Find a place with no shadows cast by brick buildings and no cars driving by to distract your senses.

If it is dark out, go to sleep and wake up early tomorrow morning. This place shouldn't have any distinct smell or taste. You want absolutely nothing to distract your imagination. Find the most boring place you can think of.

When you get there, sit down somewhere dry, take out a pen and a piece of paper, and write down these two words. Two words that may have absolutely no effect on your life. Two words, which after having many long nights of discontent, have managed to bring me a little bit of hope. Two words that were passed on to me by a friend. And two words that I am now passing on to you.

Have faith.

That's it. Seems simple enough. Have faith. No strings attached. No assumptions, no associations and absolutely no requirements. I am not a god-fearing man, and I do not pray.

This is not a prayer.

This is a declaration. This is a battle cry. This is the slogan that is branded into the scissors you are going to use to cut your rope. It is a doctrine and a mantra and a pair of transcendental sunglasses.

Have faith.

Read those two words back to yourself. Take a deep breath. Start over. Use your imagination. Picture that place that feels absolutely perfect.

Read the words. Take a deep breath. Close your eyes. And just start over.

If you aren't where you want to be, this is the key to your exit. Call your advisors, tell them to find a new line of work, and switch your major to whatever it is you will resent yourself for never doing. Call your parents and tell them that their little Jane is finally taking some responsibility for her well being. A bus ticket to Pittsburgh is only $15. An airplane ticket to Los Angeles is $200. A piece of paper and a pen cost less than a beer.

Have faith.

I wake up every day with the same nagging questions, and until I try to answer them, I doubt they will ever go away. I argue with myself about their meanings, and I try to offer excuses for the answers I am not willing to seek out. It's a sad existence, really. And the more I talk about it with people, the more I realize I am not alone. We all have those inner demons floating around taking stabs at our self-conscious.

Why not be allegorical about it and fight them with faith?

I'm in the process of trying to find some of those answers for myself. My brain hasn't been working properly lately, and I am hoping that once I get all the scrabble pieces back on the board, things will start to clear up.

I tell myself to have faith. Things will work out in the end because they have to. It is as simple as that. My life will end up the way it ends up, and the only way not to get depressed about such a definite existence is to have faith that the end is well deserving of the means.

I have faith that I will pull out of this funk. I have faith that I will find my place at this university. I have faith that I will find my place in this world.

I have faith that you will, too.

"Most people don't know what they're doing, and a lot of them are really good at it," George Carlin said once.

The next time you can't sleep, go for a walk to someplace quiet. Light up a cigar, lean against anything handy and get in a good conversation with yourself. Talk about Rasheed Wallace going to the Pistons, Dean dropping out of the race, that girl you met the other night at the party and how you wish summer would hurry the hell up already.

Once you have lulled your other self into comfortable late-evening coffee talk, grab it by the shirt collar, pull it as close to you as you can, tell it to have faith and head-butt it into tomorrow morning.

It works, I swear. Have faith.

Tomorrow morning, be comfortable in the knowledge that eventually, one day, you'll get it right. Maybe not today or the next day, but somewhere down the line you'll wake up with "Damn It Feels Good to Be a Gangsta" by Geto Boys playing in your stereo, and the birds will be chirping along, and you won't be late for class, and you'll have the answers to the questions being asked of you.

That is, until 10 minutes later, when you realize life just isn't that simple, and you don't remember how much coffee it takes to make half a pot. But man, those 10 minutes -- those 10 minutes are golden.

And in between those 10-minute moments, there is really only one thing to do to maintain any amount of sanity.

Just have faith.