Resilience Essay

By: Malia Bence

Divorce, exile, a dead friend, a country in pain. Hopelessness, sadness, loneliness, depression are all simply emotions that can be overcome with one important thing…happiness. Two people who inspire me are the Dalai Lama and my best friend, Sequoi Zozula. These two people are very well rounded, but the one thing that they both share in common that I admire is how they are always happy no matter what happens to them, good or bad.
“Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.” This is a quote said by the Dalai Lama that inspired me the most. The Dalai Lama is the leader of Tibet and Tibet is a country in Asia that China has been trying to take over. Now, he is in exile and there are at least 6 million Tibetans in China and Tibet is pretty much fully occupied by Chinese. Another very inspiring virtue that the Dalai Lama has is that he is peaceful. For example, he still prays for his “Chinese brothers and sisters” and every morning he urges Tibetans to learn Chinese so they can talk with their new rulers-not fight with them. Even though the Dalai Lama has heard about some freedom demonstrations that have lead to some of the bloodiest confrontations in the region (since similar protests in the late 1980’s) leaving 99 people dead and how Tibetans will be imprisoned for years for simply just carrying a picture of him, he still stays peaceful towards the Chinese. He says that “violence can never solve a problem deep down” and he wakes up happy every day meaning, love is the answer to all problems which is also how my best friend feels about life,
Sequoi Zozula has been my best friend since second grade and one of the reasons why she is my best friend is because she is always in a good mood. She also finds a ways to find fun in everything she does. Sequoi used to go to my school until 3rd grade, but we still stay friends. In January of 6th grade her beloved dog that was 3 years old died from a blood disease. Soon after her parents got a divorce and her mom started planning to move to Texas by the end of May. After all this happened and even throughout the process, she always kept a smile on her face as usual and never complained. Even when I was younger, I was inspired to lead my life with happiness. When you are happy, it results in you constantly being carefree. Whenever I get the chance to see her when she is occasionally in town to visit her dad, she always mentions at some point, “Well, you’ve always got to look at the glass half full not half empty.”
Throughout my whole life I have always had the goal of leading my life happily, peacefully, and carefree. The three words are all the three words that describe my two resilient people the most. I can get competitive sometimes and my goal is to be peaceful towards my enemies or competitors just like the Dalai Lama is towards China (even though China has taken over his country and sent him into exile.) When things go wrong, I sometimes feel as if I want to just feel sorry for myself, but I try to mode my actions after the Dalai Lama and Sequoi because I know that they would just look at the positives, never the negatives. Finally, my ultimate goal in life is to just be completely carefree like Sequoi. I would like to be able to just go with the flow in life and not plan or worry about the future, to just believe in fate and luck of the draw and make the best of what happen, to me in the end.
I will continue their legacies by looking at the opposite side’s opinion so that I am peaceful towards them. I will always look on the bright side of potentially depressing situations and I will let whatever comes come and deal with it in the utmost carefree manor. In the end I will now just continue to try and do my best to follow their tactics to live life and be happy.