‘This I Believe’ Second-place winning essay by Maggie Jones
Winners of the semiannual “This I Believe” contest are in, and first place goes to Samantha Nothnagel. The second-place winner is Maggie Jones, and the third-place winner is David Villegas.
For the past several years, Stockbridge High School and the Stockbridge Friends of the Library have collaborated to offer an essay-writing contest in order to engage Stockbridge High School students in an exploration of the core beliefs that guide their daily lives. Held twice a year, the contest is based on NPR’s four-year-running and now defunct “This I Believe” program.
SCN is pleased to publish second-place winner Jones’ essay in its entirety below as SCN’s monthly student-written column. Stay tuned for the first-place winner in SCN’s October edition.
by Maggie Jones
It was Wednesday night, and I was sitting in my room playing with all of my toys. My parents called me out to the front room, but at the time I thought that they just wanted to ask me a question. I turned the corner and my heart sank. My mom was crying, and my mom never cries. Then, she told me the worst news I had ever heard, my grandpa died. At first I didn’t believe it, and I didn’t want to believe it. He was the strongest person I had ever known, there was no way that he could’ve died so suddenly, and without any warning. As much as I wanted to deny it, he was gone. Suddenly, it hit me, I would never be able to play another game of basketball with him, I would never be able to look over at one of my sports games and see him cheering me on at the bleachers with a big smile on his face, and I would never get that safe feeling that I felt every time he hugged me ever again. It was all too real, and I couldn’t take it. I had never dealt with grief up to that point, let alone losing someone as important as my grandfather, or who I would consider one of my best friends.
After that night I started to withdraw from everyone and anything around me. I didn’t want to go outside, I didn’t want to play with friends, and I started hating basketball because I could only imagine him not being there to cheer me on. I just wanted to go back to the time when everything was easier, the time when I could just be a kid and not worry about people dying. No matter how hard I tried, I continued to fail to see the beauty in the world that my eyes used to see perfectly fine before his death. My parents tried really hard to get me to come out of my shell, they couldn’t understand what was wrong with me. I knew what was wrong though, I was heartbroken.
One day I went to the library in town with my parents. When we were there, they ended up convincing me to check out a book, even though I had no interest in reading at the time. I got home and put the book on my nightstand where it stayed for a few days because at the time I was exhausted purely by doing nothing. Then, one night, for reasons I don’t remember, I picked up the book and I started reading. It was life changing.
Reading that book helped transport me into this other world, and in this other world I had nothing to be afraid of. In this other world, my sadness disappeared completely. In this other world, I could be an entirely different person. From that point on I was addicted. I read everything around me, no matter what the genre or age range. I’ll admit I’ve gotten some teasing over the years because people never understand how I could possibly like reading. The fact is, reading is my coping mechanism, just as other people’s coping mechanisms are sports or their phones. No matter how hard life can get, I will always have books to turn to when I need to escape. Books are my safety net to catch me when I stumble. I’d be lost without them.
I can honestly say that reading has made my life extremely more meaningful. I am very grateful that we have literature to enjoy, so I can spend my time doing something that I love. Worries seem to just wash away the second that I step into a new world. Reading has also always helped me thrive off of learning new knowledge and expanding my brain to new vocabulary. I’m most at peace when I am relaxing in a comfy chair on a nice day with a warm drink by my side, and a book in my hand. It makes me upset that so many people are never going to feel that joy in their life, I wish I could show everyone the beauty and the wonder that warms your heart by picking up a book.
Reading sounds very cliché and nerdy, but if everyone were to read for even less than an hour every single day, then I guarantee that our minds would be more developed. Books make our brains work to understand all of the details that the author is throwing at us. I can’t begin to describe how much reading has made me smarter. Just by reading I have been more successful in classes, and my vocabulary has grown immensely. Books are like mirrors, except when you look into these mirrors you can see the world in a new, brighter light. They show us good in the world even when real life can be a struggle. Books can also show us sides of us that we don’t normally see, they can open our eyes to the depths of our emotions and expose how we truly feel on the inside. Reading could help inspire us substantially, and who knows, they might even make all of us happier in the long run. Next time, when life is stressful, try picking up a book instead of your phone, and get ready to open yourself to a world of possibilities.
Maggie Jones, second-place winner
