Honorable Mention - Peter Lauer, 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. This is a special category dedicated to those who took the time to share their touching stories and bright perspectives with HappyNews.com.

I am optimistic about the future for one reason: Angelina Jolie. Flashback- return to the year 2000. We've survived Y2K, George Walker is about to enter the White House, the final Peanuts comic strip has been published, Angelina Jolie has just made out with her brother at the Oscars.

Flash-forward to 2006. We've survived 9/11, George Walker in still in the White House, George Shultz' classic strip has entered comic "syndication," and Angelina Jolie has just attended the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Times have changed.

Since the year 2000, Angelina Jolie has had an impressive list of successes. In that year she was named one of People's "50 Most Beautiful People." Next, in 2001, the woman once famed for wearing a vile of Billy Bob Thornton's blood around her neck was named a United Nations Goodwill Ambassador. In 2002 she adopted her first child, Maddox, from Cambodia. In 2003, she won the United Nations' first Citizen of the World award. And the list kept on growing. In 2005 Jolie was voted by the readers of People as the "Sexiest Woman Alive" and now, in 2006, Angelina Jolie has visited more than twenty underdeveloped countries, doing hands-on charity work and raising awareness. She has tackled subjects ranging from human trafficking to AIDS, and exhibits an unabashed passion for her fellow humans. She is a model human being.

Which brings me to my optimism. We live in an age where the media focuses on the "end of morality" and "universal violence." Ignorance is celebrated and our most distinguished citizens are the ones whose skirts are the shortest. Sexiness is next to godliness. And yet Angelina Jolie does social work in Africa. Here is a woman who could have anything she wants. She is talented, beautiful, and wealthy. And yet she spends her time visiting babies in AIDS-afflicted countries. Here is a woman who is dating Brad Pitt, for heaven's sake. And yet she's traded in Hollywood for Ethiopia. It's astonishing.

I see Angelina Jolie as a picture of hope. I can not help but think that if the country's "sexiest woman alive" can take on such honorable causes, others will all but have to follow her path. Perhaps we will see the end of Age of Celebrities, and the start of the Age of Compassion.

Thinking of Angelina Jolie, I am always optimistic for the future. After all, if the woman who once said (after more-than-kissing him) "I am so in love with my brother right now!" can do so much for the world, perhaps we all can.