Author's Note: I wrote this essay in the Writing Lab for a DWA piece. It is
about people who don't know the real meaning of courage, hope, and honor. Let
me know what you think.
Courage, Hope, and Honor are hard things to
figure. You can have courage based on a dumb idea or mistake. You can have hope
based on things you “need”. You can have honor based on just history. You
have to use all these things to make your own life yours. But, you’re not
supposed to question adults because they have all of the right answers. Is that
really true, it all depends on who you are, what you want to be and maybe where
you came from. Sometimes no one understand the differences between these three words.
That’s why life is such a tricky thing. Should you always do what the adults in
your own life tell you to do, or should you make your own path. Take that path
no one else is willing to take because if you make your own life decisions you
will turn out better than the people who where dumb enough to follow everyone
else.
But what are courage, hope, and honor are they
really as tricky as people think they are or do you figure out what they are
when you choose your own life path. Courage, is the ability to face fear. We
all have fears in life but do we all really confront them? I will say that I
claim that I face all my fears, I don’t. I am really scared of dogs, when I was
three I was attacked by one. It gives me a good excuse to be afraid of them, right?
Not really I should really suck it up and act like I’m 13 and move on but, I
can’t get over that fear and I don’t think I ever will. When I was little my
uncle told me that facing my fears proves to everyone else in the world that it
is possible. My uncle faced his fears when he had cancer for ten years before
he passed away in 2010. I will make sure that I eventually concur my fear of
dogs, just like my uncle concurred his fear. All though it will take time for
me to get over that hump, as much as it scares me. But being scared isn’t
always a bad thing either is it? It goes with courage, you have to be afraid of
something in order to have the courage to face it.
Even though courage is one thing some people
don’t understand, I think a lot of people don’t understand the meaning of hope.
Their meaning of hope is that they hope they get a car for their birthday, or
they hope they get that shirt, or something that they really want or “need”.
That’s not the meaning of hope. The meaning of hope is that something good will
come out of something that isn’t going very well. Growing up I hoped two of my
uncles wouldn’t die from cancer. Well you know what those kids got that car and
got everything they wanted, and guess what I didn’t get my wish and I was
really hoping that someone would finally give me what I wanted but, I learned
something after they both passed away though, it was that everything
happens for a reason. You can hope for anything in the world and sometimes it’s
just not good enough because that’s what happened in their life and you can’t
change that, but the best part I got out of it all was that they were proud
that they were themselves and lived their lives to the fullest and you know
what the honor of being yourself is 100 times better than being the copy of
someone else.
All though when I was thinking about hope I
started thinking about honor. Honor to me means that you die trying for
something important, or that you are your own person, then you have both honor
and courage. I hope that everyone understands the meaning of honor. All
Americans had hope on 9-11-2001. All Americans had hope on the day Pearl Harbor
got hit, and even though both of these were really sad times for our country we
realized, that we are free and able to get through anything. That is why hope
and honor fit together so well. Sometimes though I feel like our country is far
from honored to be together as one, I hope that everyone in America is honored
to be an American and be proud that we can make it out of anything together.
