Select Entry- Alexandria Bracewell, Age 33

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.

At first glance the world resembles a dessert. So harsh, bleak almost deadly, but just as the cool, clean rains bring glorious life to a vast lonely sea of sand; so do children breathe fresh life into a world gasping for air. My youngest son heard about this contest and wrote the following :

"Why am I optimistic about the future. I think that in the future there is no more crime. People will be flying around on hover boards and laughing. So many people who have been gone because of these wars are back and younger and reunited with there familys. People will have green lawns big bushy bushes and tall oak trees with tree houses. There will be familys having picinics on the parks lawn. No more spending a lot of time at work all the time and no time with there familys. Familys will be spending more time with each other. Cars will not give off exhaust they will be powered by the sun and at night the lamps will give off the power of the sun just not as bright. That is why I am optimistic about the future."

I would not have counted what he wrote as 'reasons' to be optimistic about the future, but when I thought about it, I realized I was wrong. These are the things he would like to see and those are the reasons in itself to change the world. If we nurture their dreams, instead of " bringing them to grips with reality", the world has the brightest future ever thought possible. It is easier than anyone ever thought to change the world. All we must do is grow these beautiful dessert roses—our children. Let them bloom. To use once more an already overly used phrase…..The children are our future, and with their hopes, dreams, and imaginations come wonderful new beginnings.