Finalist - Gabriela Vargas, Age 18

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.

I come from a place where the seamless word 'freedom' is an idealistic notion and never a birthright. I live in a place where most are expected to swallow their every desired goal and burning dream for something greater, in favor of the warped political and richer minds of few.

I come from a place where poverty, misery, and violence rule above all. Education is a rare gift among men, and violence is a commonplace thing. It is a small jewel of a country, Honduras, that holds promise and hope, but corruption and tragedy.

I was a simple girl, a lonely girl. I loved red balloons and chocolate and caramel popcorn. I had my father's nose and my mother's black eyes. I dreamed of Italy and Russia, dreamed of a perfect sunset and running through wet mud with bare feet and fields of sunflower and dandelions. I lived in a rather idyllic bubble, led a sheltered life in large part by my parents, who wanted to protect me from harm.

My grandfather was an extraordinary man. He had calloused fingers, from working his land and playing the guitar as a modern-day bohemian. He had intelligent eyes, one was smaller then the other, had a compassionate heart and the soul of an artist. He always tried to make a difference, mi abuelito - my grandpapa. He believed in the promise of our country, was passionate about making a difference because all the good men were now scared to do so.

He was diagnosed with terminal cancer the year I turned fifteen, and passed away six months later. I still remember his hands, his shirts that smelled of smoke and peppermint, his love for all things Pink Panther and Dean Martin. He was a man who wanted to fight corruption and drug traffic; he was a politician, an economist, a musician, and a poet. He was a husband who devoted his life to his wife and his children. He was a lawyer who rarely charged his customers, for all were friends or could not afford it. He knew the National Hymns of France and Italy, he saw the world and he believed in change - he had a vision for the world, a vision he would not be alive to see.

We still live in a broken world, a staggering place filled now with tough lines and dark edges and the desperation for survival. We breathe our sad reality, the social and economic distress.

I study law like my grandfather because it always gives you an answer. In the world, above everything, there is law. The equality, the justice resides in its purest form, but only in paper. And I have hope for the future because I feel passionately about my country, my beliefs, that there is still goodness and morals and what would I be if I turned my back on it? I would be no better then the righteous indignation of the problem and never working on the cause, to really see.

People keep killing people, the poor keep getting poorer. We have seen too much, and hurt too much, and with the passing days our lives are marred with scars, long lines bruised into our skin that take away our innocence as we see the harsh world for what it is.

There is evil in this world, and there are hands that wound the gentle and the good-hearted and hurt that wound until it kills. But there is also good, for one can never exist without the other. There is goodness in the worst of men, and signs of malice in the best of men. What we choose to act upon is just that - our choice.

These are dreams, dreams that make take years but are possible.

And that is why I still hope for the future - because possibility always exists. I still mourn for my grandfather, who wanted to do many things and now can't. It was then I knew I must do it for him. Because he is still alive in many ways, in the people that he helped and the lives that he changed and the sheer will that kept him going.

It is the reason why love stands unwavering amidst the dark times. The reason that goodness remains despite the warring hate and echoes of despair. The reason that heroes are born - not the ones encased in scrolls that live on in legends and fables.

Real heroes. The selfless mother that lays down her life for her child. The hard-working father that encourages his daughter to reach for the stars and keep reaching. The police officer that seeks safety and justice for others, and not for himself. The fallen soldier that fights bravely for a cause.

The grandfather that gives his granddaughter enough hope in the world to keep trying.

There is hope for the future because we still live, we still breathe, we pick ourselves up and we move on. We stagger and we stumble but we keep surviving. We retain a small dose of our idealism and we have faith that we can make a difference - and we can. And those small moments of peace and beauty make it all worth while. Because those very moments are what brave men have died for, and hopeful hearts have bled for.

Mother Theresa said that if you love so much, love until it hurts, then there is no more hurt, and only much more love.

Life is a test. An endless struggle - and it is never easy. But we never have to go through it alone. We were given strong shoulders to carry the difficult burdens - and the compassion to carry each other. And we must always believe in each other.

We must always believe in ourselves.

And though the years have changed me, strengthened me in ways I never thought they would, inside I am still the same girl that wants to be a faerie and loves red balloons and caramel popcorn, the same girl who dreams of Italy and Russia and longs to do great things.

Regardless of our color, our different tongues, and religions - we each make a difference in the smallest of ways as long as there is purpose, as long as there is enough love to break free the chains of hatred, as long as we love life enough to say I want to live.

To fight the good fight.

And never stop fighting.

We leave a mark in the very air, a mark that demonstrates strength and never-ending hope.

That, in itself, is our triumph.