Select Entry- Sondra Harris, Age 34

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.

When I was nine years old, I used to volunteer at the office where my mother was a paid employee. Amongst my other go-fer dirty-work let-the-kid-do-it tasks was one job I loved: operating the switchboard. This was not a full-time responsibility for me; I would just cover the phones for an hour so the regular operator could have

lunch. However, I got to be very proficient at it, and I learned the ins and outs of speaking pleasantly to a customer on the telephone, including how to smooth over relations with an unhappy caller. The most efficient way of doing this, taught to me by my mother and still

the way I manage it today, is to smile when answering the phone. Whether or not I'm feeling happy, my voice will reflect the smile, and I've found that the unseen telephone caller is just as responsive to a smile as is a person facing me.

Over the years, I've learned one other lesson: if I'm feeling miserable, and I smile deliberately, as hard as I can, really pushing the muscles, and hold it for thirty seconds, then relax, not only does my face retain the smile, but so does my whole attitude. I'm not sure why this works, but it does.

And thank goodness it does, because sometimes, when I see the news of the world, I feel so very, very, bleak.

I don't want to be some chirpy, Pollyanna-esque, life's so wonderful type of person. I am a realist, not an ostrich with my head in the sand. I see bad things happen, often to good people, and often for no reason, and it upsets me, because I am a human being.

Besides, I find chirpy, Pollyanna-esque, life's so wonderful types of people to be incredibly annoying.

For a long time, especially after September 11th, 2001, I was interpreting any frightening, destructive, or even just wacky news as being another "sign of the Apocalypse." If it wasn't being done by nature, such as the tsunami and the hurricane, we were doing it to ourselves, with war and dishonesty and hate.

I joked about this quite a bit, which is my equivalent to whistling in the dark, but I also genuinely believed that every single incident that had never before occurred was a signal that I had better be prepared for The End.

Eventually I realized that I didn't want to live in constant fear, and so I began applying my "smile really hard and fool myself that everything is all right" technique to my life on as regular a basis as I could manage.

It hasn't always been easy to do that. Sometimes, I still feel pretty bleak.

But I've also concluded that, if the world hasn't ended by now, it probably isn't going to do so at all.

Which led to another realization: we are really incredibly resilient.

We fear, and we mourn. Then we take action, and we start over.

We heal.

We do this over and over - not just as individuals, or as communities, or even as nations, but as a species, as a planet, as a microcosm of the universe we're spinning through.

"This, too, shall pass" isn't just a trite saying. It is truth. Whatever "this" is, it always does "pass." Our reputation for buoyancy precedes us.

The future will take care of itself (another trite-yet-true saying), because that's its very nature. How can you not like a concept that does precisely what it is meant to do?

That, above all else, is what gives me hope. No matter what else happens, the future will take care of itself - and it's hard not to be optimistic, knowing that.