ESSAY
2009 HONORABLE MENTION

Inner Peace
Courtney Grigsby
16 years old, District of Columbia

                Peace is something that everyone wants.  Just as I was sitting down to begin this essay, there was a shooting outside of my home.  As I sat on the floor, huddled up against the wall, I began to think about the ironic situation.  I thought about the nonviolent leaders such as Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.  I asked myself, how could they preach nonviolence when they were surrounded with so much violence?  How were they able to stand up and lead against the odds? The only thing I could think of was peace.

                Gandhi and Dr. King were at peace with themselves.  This is how they were able to stand up against all the chaos that was going on around them.  In order to go our into the world and spread peace, you yourself have to be at peace.  You have to work on you before you work on someone or something else.  In one of his plays, Tyler Perry said that there are millions of people out there wondering why they are not married.  They don’t realize that they have been blessed with time to learn to be happy and at peace with themselves.  If you can’t be happy with yourself, how can you expect to be happy with someone else?  You have to find out who you really are and find peace within that.

                Inner peace is probably the most important peace a person can attain.  When you see someone who is truly at peace with themselves, you cannot help but wish that you were in the same position they are in.  You strive to attain inner peace.  Once you reach that inner peace, or are close to it, people notice.  They, in turn, will try to attain inner peace.  It’s contagious.

                In order to have that contagious influence on people, people must come to terms with the many different situations in their lives.  Just one thing can cause a battle within you.  About a year ago, I had a disagreement with a fellow classmate.  It got to the point that we went two weeks without talking to each other.  After those two weeks, my classmate finally came and apologized to me.  I said that I forgave her, but deep down, I knew that I didn’t really mean it.  For the rest of the school year, I started to distance myself from my classmate.  The disagreement we had, the way she treated me, was still eating away at me.  I did not realize this at first, but after a month or two, I had to sit down and examine myself.  I knew that in my heart, I was not at peace with all that had happened.  Towards the end of the school year, my classmate and I had a heart to heart conversation.  I was finally able to come to terms with the situation and truly forgive my classmate.  I was finally able to attain inner peace.