What Do I Believe? | Teen Ink

What Do I Believe?

April 26, 2012
By Maggie Jablonska BRONZE, Downers Grove, Illinois
Maggie Jablonska BRONZE, Downers Grove, Illinois
1 article 0 photos 0 comments

The hardest question anybody can ask a teenager is what do you believe in? Teen beauty pageant contestants would say “world peace” to fool the audience that they actually care. Teenage boys that wear their pants around their ankles and like to “have fun on the weekends” could say that they believe that marijuana should be legalized. But are these beliefs real? The definition of a belief is, “confidence in the truth or existence of something not immediately susceptible to rigorous proof”. Well I have confidence that we, as a society, can see the good in everyone.

It’s so easy to pick out people’s faults. Our mind constantly looks for the tiniest little details about every person we know. It’s our nature to evaluate the person in front of us, to figure out if we can trust them or if we should be on our guard. It doesn’t matter who the person is and whether they are vain, self-centered, moody, and finicky, a politician, celebrity, or a criminal, we will judge them by what we see, hear, and know from past encounters. Even our own family isn’t safe from our judgment. Usually, they’re the first ones on the list.

When we are born, we have innocence written all over us. All the adults coo over how beautiful we are (I mean what else can they say, “Your baby is so ugly!”?) and say that we will go far. Unfortunately as children grow older and become adults, they pick up all of the imperfections we adults possess and that innocence is lost. One mistake of coming home late, going out even though you’re grounded, getting grounded in the first place because of something you did wrong all lead up to the change into adulthood. Okay, so one mistake is made, if it’s small, people will forget, if it’s big then people will start judging you and comparing you to other people that have been there and done that. By ditching school once you can be considered a future dropout. If you drink alcohol then people might believe that you will end up an alcoholic. However, we can’t really understand someone until, “we’ve walked a mile in their shoes”. So why do we judge people on first sight? We want to feel better about ourselves if we put down every person we see. But finding the good in everyone is just as easy as assessing them from head to toe. All we (and I’m talking about everyone) have to do is say hello. If you really want to judge them, get to know them first. Maybe your judgment will change. The ironic thing is that they’ve probably already judged you too and by getting to know them, you might change your opinion about the person at the same time that they change their opinion about you.


We are all just human, and we all just have to learn to love each other. Our natural reaction is to find the bad in people, and ostracize those who are not like us. It’s against the main plan for mankind. It always results in fighting, bias, pain, resentment, and anger. Always. There is always more to someone than meets the eye. When we see the human side of everyone, we cannot help but learn to accept each other. When we see the good in people we start to have compassion and understanding and, in doing so, we start to treat each other the way we want to be treated: with honor, respect, and dignity. There is so much we don’t know about a person when we first meet them, but we don’t have to know. We, as humans, have to reach out and love those around us whether we know them or not, because everyone needs love, friendship, and support.

It’s so easy to pick out people’s faults. Our mind constantly looks for the tiniest little details about every person we know. It’s our nature to evaluate the person in front of us, to figure out if we can trust them or if we should be on our guard. It doesn’t matter who the person is and whether they are vain, self-centered, moody, and finicky, a politician, celebrity, or a criminal, we will judge them by what we see, hear, and know from past encounters. Even our own family isn’t safe from our judgment. Usually, they’re the first ones on the list.

When we are born, we have innocence written all over us. All the adults coo over how beautiful we are (I mean what else can they say, “Your baby is so ugly!”?) and say that we will go far. Unfortunately as children grow older and become adults, they pick up all of the imperfections we adults possess and that innocence is lost. One mistake of coming home late, going out even though you’re grounded, getting grounded in the first place because of something you did wrong all lead up to the change into adulthood. Okay, so one mistake is made, if it’s small, people will forget, if it’s big then people will start judging you and comparing you to other people that have been there and done that. By ditching school once you can be considered a future dropout. If you drink alcohol then people might believe that you will end up an alcoholic. However, we can’t really understand someone until, “we’ve walked a mile in their shoes”. So why do we judge people on first sight? We want to feel better about ourselves if we put down every person we see. But finding the good in everyone is just as easy as assessing them from head to toe. All we (and I’m talking about everyone) have to do is say hello. If you really want to judge them, get to know them first. Maybe your judgment will change. The ironic thing is that they’ve probably already judged you too and by getting to know them, you might change your opinion about the person at the same time that they change their opinion about you.


We are all just human, and we have to learn to love each other. Our natural reaction to find the bad in people, and ostracize those who are not like us, is against the main plan for mankind. It always results in pain, fighting, anger, bias, and resentment. Always. There is always more to someone than meets the eye. When we see the human side of everyone, we cannot help but learn to accept each other. When we see the good in people we start to have compassion and understanding and in doing so, we start to treat each other the way we want to be treated: with honor, respect, and dignity. There is so much we don’t know about a person when we first meet them, but we don’t have to know. We, as humans, have to reach out and love those around us whether we know them or not, because everyone needs love, friendship, and support.


The author's comments:
This article was written as an assignment for my AP Language and Composition class.

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