I Believe by Katy

I Believe by Katy - December 2017 Scholarship Essay

I remember very vividly the day my father lost his job, even though I couldn’t have been more than four years old at the time. I walked into my parents’ room and found my mother sitting in her chair with tears flowing down her face and some sort of thick paper, probably a bill, in her trembling hands. My mother was, and still is, the strongest, most beautiful woman I know. Seeing her in front of me, looking so vulnerable with the black smudges of mascara under her bloodshot red eyes, contradicted my whole perception of her as my mother. As soon as she noticed me standing there, she immediately folded up the papers and tucked them behind her back, attempting to hide them. I didn’t understand what she was crying about at the time, but I didn’t need to. I simply walked up to her with my arms raised and sat on her lap while she held me and cried into my shoulder. I kept repeating the words, “It’s okay, Mommy. Everything will be okay.”
Everything did, indeed, turn out okay. My parents never let me go without dinner, and my dad eventually found another job. Years later, looking back on that day and thinking about my reaction, I realized that I still possess the same optimism I did as a young girl. I firmly believe that no matter what the circumstances are, there is always hope, even if it is difficult to see. The positives of a situation are like the sun, shining in my eyes and blinding everything else from view. This is not true for everyone, however, and it saddens me to see others filled with so much negativity. Of course, it is not that a person consciously chooses to be pessimistic, but that he or she simply does not know how to find a silver lining. I suppose I was born with the ability to brighten everything with a positive light. This is why I am an unapologetic optimist: I don’t have control over other people’s actions or life’s burdensome events, but I do have control over my attitude towards those events. I can choose to let myself become jaded and discouraged by the world’s difficulties, or I can have a positive perspective of the world and use that to inspire others. I know which one I will choose every single time.