READFIELD -- When you are really cold, you forget about everything else.

You forget about whether or not you need a shower. You forget about what your hair looks like, you forget what people say to you and how to think straight. Every ounce of you is concentrated on keeping warm.

If there is even a slight breeze, you notice it and try to find a way to prevent it from touching you. This is what I learned when I slept outside in 18-degree weather for a night with my Amnesty International group.

I used to take sleeping in bed for granted. Now I realize that it is a luxury to be able to curl up in a warm bed each night, a luxury that 18 of my friends and I decided to forgo for a night.

As heating prices in Maine became a regular topic in the newspapers and on the news, my friends and I realized that we had no concept of what it was like to be homeless and to be cold. Moreover, we realized that we had little idea of why people were homeless in Maine.

So we set up some cardboard boxes, piled on as many clothes as we could and invited Dean Lachance from Bread of Life Ministries to come speak to us about what being homeless in Maine is really like.

As we sat there listening to Lachance explain that it only takes one traumatic event to change your life so dramatically that you become homeless, it was clear that many of us had no idea that one event could cause such a heavy spiral downward. As he left, the atmosphere was a little more sober. We were all thinking about what we had just heard and the rest of the night ahead.

As the night went on, it got colder and colder and many of us huddled around the fire to keep warm. Soon it became too cold for even that and we hunkered down in our cardboard boxes, preparing for the night ahead.

It wasn't too bad at first; it was actually kind of like camping. But as the night went on, I became colder and colder. I got so cold that it was impossible to sleep for more than an hour, because if I did, my hands and toes would freeze so much that they hurt. At that point, I would concentrate all my energy on moving my toes and fingers just to get some blood moving.

By morning, I knew I understood what bone-chilling meant. I really was cold. It was all I could think about.

When I finally got the feeling back into my toes, I remembered something my mother once heard a Connecticut state senator say: "A community is only as strong as its weakest link."

With newly elected Barack Obama's "Yes We Can" attitude sweeping the nation, we must remember that we "cannot" do anything, if we do not take care of our weakest links. If we do not take care of them, we, as a nation, as a state and as a people are nothing. Only when we take care of our neighbors will we be able to achieve anything. Only when we take care of our neighbors will we be truly strong.

Being cold was not fun, however, I will never forget the feeling, nor do I think many of my fellow cardboard-city inhabitants will. We saw a problem, did an experiment and came to a conclusion: In order to survive, you must stay warm. Without heat, you cannot think clearly, you cannot focus and you cannot perform to your potential. Without heat, existence is no longer a certainty.

This year, many of our friends and family in Maine will go without heat.

This is unacceptable. We are only as strong as the family next door shivering in the cold. We are only as strong as those in the homeless shelters hoping they can come back the next night. We can be stronger than that. We, as a people, this winter, must take care of those of us without heat.

We need to be aware, we need to learn and we need to love. We are only as strong as our weakest link.

We can be stronger.

Meg Richardson is a junior at Kents Hill School and is co-president of Amnesty International at the school.