2005 - 7th Grade 3rd Place:

Rebeca Robledo, Illinois

Truth or Beauty?

What is more important in your life, truth or beauty? My response is a very limited one, limited because it's limited to my mind, my knowledge, and my experiences. My response is beauty. The reason I strongly favor beauty is because many people believe beauty is just one the surface, but I believe there is also inner beauty. "Strange that the vanity which accompanies beauty-excusable, perhaps, when there is such great beauty, or at any rate understandable-should persist after the beauty was gone," Aristotle one said this and I believe this to be true because even after the surface beauty was gone if someone were to have such a great amount of inner beauty the beauty would remain within the person and would shine through even after all the surface beauty would be gone, so it would seem as if the beauty was never gone. An experience as I have mentioned before is limited to the person to whom it belongs unless he/she decides to inform another individual. This experience however I am sure was not limited to the person who experienced it because it appeared on television. Last year on Mother's Day I was watching a show on the station, HBO (Home Box Office). This show showed a young girl who had been burned when she was a baby. Looking at the screen kind of became a mental or even a physical challenge for me because of the intense deformity of the child that the fire had created. They then showed how the girl looked now that she was about seven and just seeing how joyful and alive she was made me realize that she had more beauty than anyone I knew. She had inner beauty even though she didn't have outer beauty. Her beauty was stronger than any I had ever seen.

Inner or outer beauty, which is greater? Outer beauty may be here today and gone tomorrow, but if kept modest inner beauty lasts an eternity.

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