A few weeks ago my monotonous weekend activities were disrupted by an unusual encounter: A brief, but meaningful discussion with a U.S. Marine who recently returned from the battlefields of Iraq.

I asked how it feels to return to the place you call home, and I unknowingly triggered an enlightening conversation on how life can be for a soldier returning from the war in Iraq.

I learned that soldiers realize society expects them to return home and fall back into the routines they established when they headed off to war. Society could not be more wrong.

How can we expect these soldiers to quickly assimilate back into a society that has yet to learn the value of freedom and the beauty of life? Soldiers returning home have learned these lessons while trudging across the desert plains of the Middle East. They learned that they will no longer hesitate to tell the people that are important to them how much they love them and how lucky they are to simply see them smile.

When this U.S. Marine looked around at the people chugging beers and starting fights at the party I attended on Saturday, he shook his head and said, "If only they understood the big picture."

The fact is that the average college student measures their life day-to-day, class-to-class, and activity-to-activity. We are so consumed by our lives that we rarely take time to reflect on the events of the world around us.

A majority of our generation has the mentality that what happens across the ocean on continents we have never visited might be considered "important" but essentially not worth our time.

Some students read the daily paper and watch the evening news, but the reality of life-altering current events never seems to truly resonate with us. No more then 15 minutes is spent being intrigued by the images from the front lines of the war in Iraq when you realize you missed the first five minutes of Laguna Beach -- time to change the channel.

People in our generation fail to recognize that soldiers stationed abroad have chosen to put their carefree lives on hold to fight for their country. The rest of us remain at home on our comfortable couches discussing what will happen if LC and Jason of Laguna Beach decide that they are not each other's soul mates -- as they had originally hoped two weeks ago when they spent their first hot tub date together.

The American soldiers who have come home for however long, still shaking the dust from the battlefields of Iraq off their boots, should teach us that a "real world" besides the one featured on MTV exists that we self-absorbed college students so often ignore.

Society should recognize that countless soldiers are comparing their homecomings to those of their fellow servicemen and servicewomen who served in the Vietnam War because, just like in the '60s and '70s, many people today are against the war. These soldiers cannot help but feel that their efforts are lost among the limitless war protests and the plummeting percentage of supporters for the ongoing war.

The issue here is not about who should support President Bush in his efforts abroad. The issue is that we as young Americans should support our troops and learn that there is more to life than getting a good grade on an exam or watching the newest episode of Desperate Housewives. Contrary to what some say, it is possible to support the troops without supporting the war they are fighting.

Just because the war in Iraq has yet to grace the pages of our history textbooks does not mean this war is not as real as the wars that affected our parents and grandparents.

The death toll or the amount of land conquered in the name of the United States should not measure the war's success.

Instead, success should all be looked upon as the struggle made by men and women just like us to breathe life into the words so revered by our founding fathers -- freedom and justice for all.