2006 — 7th Grade 5th Place

Krystal Dagget, Iowa

Fear is defined as a normal human emotional reaction, a built-in mechanism that everyone is equipped with. As humans, we have fears. Fear of terrorism, fear of war, fear of death. Fear is an emotion that can be overcome if you have hope.

Hope is one of the strongest feelings a person can experience. It is a feeling that is needed to conquer your fears and go on. "Just as a man cannot live without dreams, he cannot live without hope."- Elie Wiesel, Dec. 11, 1986.

I believe that if you have unshakeable hope, you will be able to conquer you fears. Hope can also help to keep you going through even the darkest times, because when you hope, you believe that there will be light again. Not necessarily tomorrow, or the next day, but you know that night can only last so long.

I have heard a speaker once before who talked about hope. He said that you need to have hope always, without doubting or hesitating. There will always be tears and sadness, but sadness last only as long as you let it.

I think that if you will give hope a chance to plant itself, it will grow strong enough to beat any fear(s) you or I have. Hope is necessary to help get people through any trails that they might have. "If you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps life moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of it all" -Martin Luther King Jr.

That is why I think that, in the long run, hope will always be able to conquer fear.

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