Honorable Mention - Alicia Sparks, Age 24

Welcome to our Optimistic Essay category. Here you will find the $1,000 winning contest essay, 5 finalist essays and 15 honorable mention essays and a growing list of hand-picked select essays that readers submitted during our "Why Are You Optimistic About the Future?" contest. This is a special category dedicated to those who took the time to share their touching stories and bright perspectives with HappyNews.com.

I applaud anyone who can follow that title with a list of genuinely felt reasons long enough to keep himself truly optimistic about the future, and not just one that will tide himself over until death at which point he can inevitably stop thinking about it. Personally, I have always been optimistic about the future; I just never knew why. When asked why a person feels a certain way, "I don't know" is not a very convincing answer. I mulled over the idea of approaching this particular subject for days before I finally decided not to begin writing, but to begin asking questions. I went to my father, mother, sister, significant other and best friend—the five people whose opinions I normally hold in the highest regard. I figured talking with them would calm my own troubled feelings about my unexplainable optimism and point me in the direction of a cheerful response to this issue. Boy, was I wrong…or so I thought. All five conversations went something like this:

ME: "Are you optimistic about the future?"

OTHER: (after a brief pause) "Sure, sure I am. I guess so."

ME: "Why?"

OTHER: (after another brief pause) "Oh, I don't know. I'm in good health. My job is going great. My kids are doing well. I try to do the right thing."

ME: "What about the future in general, you know, the future of the world, of mankind?"

OTHER: (without hesitation) "Oh, no, definitely not. No way. Things are horrible. People only care about themselves. The end has to be near."

This was not at all what I expected. Fed by the pessimistic outlooks of my family and friends, new anxieties soon began stemming from my already troubled thoughts. I played the conversations over and over in my mind, and aside from the fact that during each of the conversations, positive answers were given with hesitation, and negative ones with almost surprising quickness, one other thing stuck out—I try to do the right thing. Every person I talked to conveyed that message; it was perhaps worded a bit differently by the speaker, but the meaning was the same, nonetheless. I thought some more and realized this was a feeling that I'd had all my life. Maybe not that everyone tries to do the right thing, but that in general there are people out there in the world who do. And it's not always the thing that's specifically right for them, but at times it's even what's right for others.

Admittedly, humans have tendencies to become absorbed almost solely in their own personal worlds. Sometimes driving to work in style takes precedence over worrying about the added air pollution. Of course, in our defense, we aren't always so eager to pollute the air when it means making the drive to our local recycling center. Speaking of vehicles and garbage, there are times when it just makes sense to toss that unsightly empty soda can out the window, rather than allow it to sit in its cup holder, minding its own business, until we can get to a trash can or even home. And yes, there are times when we can't fathom coming up with an entire sixty cents a day to help feed, clothe, and medically treat a starving child in a country we've never visited, but working overtime or perhaps even taking on a second job just so our daughters can wear outrageously priced designer dresses to their proms (dresses, mind you, that will most likely never be worn again) somehow slides by as being…the right thing to do. But we can't think about that hungry child later, either; the MasterCard bill just came in.

Gas prices keep rising due to a war most of us don't understand or even care to understand; we simply curse, fill up, pay the man, maybe curse a few more times, and drive away. There's a hole in our ozone layer that keeps getting bigger, ice caps are melting, and diseases are popping up left and right for which we have no cures—sometimes, for which we don't even have explanations. Tsunamis are wiping out entire countries, hurricanes are doing the same to some states, and we don't know if California is even going to exist in the years to come. And what about the plethora of homeless people, the abused and abusers, murderers, rapists, thieves, and drug dealers? Surely you can understand my apprehension when thinking of a way to explain to others why I am optimistic about the future, especially when the only answer I've been able to give myself has been a tentative and quite embarrassing, "I don't know." Irish orator, philosopher, and politician Edmund Burke once said, "Better be despised for too anxious apprehension, than ruined by too confident security." Perhaps this was the principle my family and friends were following. However, my apprehension isn't anxious; it's more unwilling. I want to believe in the future of our world. Is it naïve to possess a blind faith that the future will be bright?

Well, maybe the faith isn't so blind. Sure, there is concrete evidence that we are a progressing world. In 2006, we have better medical care, treatments, and preventions; faster and cheaper communication through cell phones, the postal service, and the Internet; faster and safer transportation whether it be with automobiles, airplanes, trains, or boats. Not to mention all of our little conveniences found in and around the house—microwaves, washers and dryers, vacuums, lawn mowers, and computers. Face it, a hundred years ago the world was without most of these gadgets that make life easier and safer to live. Yes, they are the evidence that we are a world that has progressed, is progressing, and will continue to progress. What's not to be optimistic about?

Still, aside from these helpful tools and devices, and the knowledge to improve upon them while inventing the new, we're taking something else into the future with us, and simply put, it's us. Humankind. We the people. We're all going. That includes the abusers, murderers, rapists, thieves, and drug dealers; those who do more harm to us than the natural disasters because they do it everyday. But it also includes the five wonderful people I talked with before starting this, the five people who all have one thing in common—they try to do the right thing. I know I'm not the only person who has benefited from having these kinds of people around me—in fact, we all have them.

For every slave-owner and racist, there is an Abraham Lincoln paving the road to freedom and a Martin Luther King, Jr., paving another for civil rights. For every Adolf Hitler, there is an Anne Frank exuberating courage and hope and an Oskar Schindler saving lives. For every terminal illness that strikes innocent lives, there is a Mother Theresa praying and caring for the sick. And for every Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda there is a selfless fire department, police department; a brave Rudy Giuliani and a bold George Bush; a supportive Tony Blair; an America. Let's not forget the tsunamis, the hurricanes, floods and earthquakes that devastate what lives they don't take. For every one of those, there is FEMA and other countless disaster relief programs; musicians throwing charity concerts to raise money; families offering everything from donations to their homes to those who have been robbed of their own; volunteers packing up and heading out to help in any way they can. It seems that for every reason to be pessimistic about the future there is only one, nevertheless much stronger, reason to be optimistic. That reason is the people—the people who try to do the right thing.

Suddenly, it began to dawn on me why I was optimistic about the future. I have been surrounded by these people—these people who try to do the right thing—all my life. Since I have seen this so much, perhaps my optimism is somewhat innate. Since the beginning of time, there have been horrible events whether they were caused by the elements or by the human hand. But there have also always been people who believed in doing what was right, fighting during the battle, or cleaning up the mess afterwards. Edmund Burke is also noted for having said, "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." I think it's apparent that our good men don't just stand around and scratch their heads, and people don't always care only about themselves. As long as there are these people who keep trying to do the right thing, I will remain optimistic about our future.