This I Believe: Be Everything

Every year at ESK, eighth grade students share their “This I Believe” essays with their fellow classmates during Chapel. Students are tasked with sharing a life lesson they have learned with the student body. According to the “This I Believe” organization website, students are encouraged to “start by telling a compelling story about how you came to hold an important personal belief—something that guides your daily living.” The talks are based on the “This I Believe” radio show hosted by Edward R. Murrow more than 50 years ago. Students all over the country – and the world – participate in the “This I Believe” project each year. ESK will feature several of these essays, including today’s from eighth grader Ali Pensky. 

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“…each one of us is a brain, and an athlete, and a basket case, a princess, and a criminal.”

– The Breakfast Club

You cannot define a person by one character trait, one experience, one belief, one accomplishment, or one failure. You are everything. I am everything.  We are everything we have seen, been taught, heard, experienced, said, read about, wished for, fought for, lost, gained, and felt. I can’t pick one thing, so I won’t. I believe in the power of words, different opinions, being nice, effort, adventure, challenge, freedom, people, second chances, and so many other things. I hope there are countless things that you believe in too.

We all have more than one side to us; more than what most of us choose to reveal to everyone else. Maybe we put it in writing, or maybe it stays hidden inside. Dare to let it out. Dare to be everything at once. Giving all of what we have to everyone we know, and everything we do, will make for a better world.  I can’t choose one thing to define myself, and that makes things harder sometimes. Travel, different people, new goals, good and bad mindsets, diversity, and lack of diversity, are what teach me to strive for everything.

My Great Aunt Kathy is an example of “everythingness” to me. She is relentless, bold, caring, humble, sensitive to others’ needs, and just all around smart. Abbreviating her life thus far into a few sentences, I’d say this: She grew up with five siblings where everyone in the family had to work hard. Although she never went to college, she became a Vice President of American Airlines. She climbs mountains, her greatest one being a peak of Mount Everest, and she tutors kids in Harlem. A few years ago her husband died suddenly.  You might think this would’ve put an end to her adventures, but it didn’t. The most recent adventurous thing she did was run a marathon in Russia. Two Christmas Eves ago, I clearly remember her asking me if I wanted to watch the Rockettes in the other room with her. I didn’t really want to, but because it was Aunt Kathy, and because I knew it brought back happy old memories for her, I did. It had been around an hour, and I think she could tell I was becoming bored. She pressed mute and began the conversation that we often have together. “What do you want to do when you’re older?” She asks me. “What do you want to see?” She and I could sit and simply talk about life like that for hours. She is just that type of person. Aunt Kathy is an example of being, and doing, everything.

Answers aren’t always simple. If you ask someone what they do or who they are the answer is usually quite straightforward. “I’m an accountant”, or “Well, I’m finishing school right now”.  In reality, that is just one little part of a very big picture. My mom’s a teacher, but she’s also a loving mother, a reader, a wife, a chauffeur, a friend, an observer, a daughter, and a deep, thoughtful thinker. If someone asked you, what would you say? Would you know the answer?

Everything we say and do can lead to growth… challenging us to take on more, and to become more. In the movie The Breakfast Club, it takes each character just one day in detention to realize they are worth more than what they thought. A jock under the pressure of his father, a nerd under the pressure he puts on himself, a bad boy who has only been told he is nothing, a girl with messed up thoughts who happens to be beautiful, and, my favorite, a quiet girl covered by her hair, baggy clothing, and lies all get to know each other. Although for some of us our struggles may not be as intense as these characters’, I bet a lot of us in this room are going through some of the same things these five kids went through. Feeling the pressure to do what our friends will applaud, even if it means hurting others. Or beating ourselves up over who we are and who people may think we are. Although they seem so different, the princess, the criminal, the brain, the basket case, and the athlete all find they have similarities. They all have insecurities and family issues.  Each character puts so, so much energy into hiding these important details about themselves from others – and it weakens them.

Looking around at everyone in this chapel, on the surface, we all seem so different. Some of us look pretty put together, some don’t. Some are known as smart, some aren’t. Some are called “popular,” some aren’t. It sounds pretty bad out loud… and unfortunately it’s what a lot of us do. We put people in categories. But on the inside, we have a lot in common. We all have strengths and weaknesses. We all have good hearts. We all want to belong. Yet we have different ways of expressing ourselves and deciding what to show others.

We all need to reach out and find people who seem different from us, but aren’t. So find someone in this room. Make a new connection. Another quote from The Breakfast Club is, “We’re all pretty bizarre. Some of us are just better at hiding it, that’s all.” I agree. We all need to find our bizarre.

There isn’t enough space or maybe even enough words to try to list everything: all the different sides of me and all the different sides of you. There’s a me who likes to go on adventures, and there’s a me who’d rather sit at home all day and watch movies. There’s a me that will have my nose in a book all day, and a me who’s on the soccer field knocking people over. There’s a me who is confident, and there’s a me who worries about every single action made. It’s all me, and it’s all real. It’s everything.

So… be a brain, be an athlete, be a basketcase, be a princess, and be a criminal. Embrace your everything, and don’t forget you have it.

One thing is boring. Be everything. This I believe.