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Kai Stinson
Ms. Douglas
UWRIT 1101-090
09/06/2014

Life is Worth Believing

I have one faith, ten priorities, and five ethics. How many beliefs do I have? I
have four. They are the following: people should not stress over what they cant control,
live life to its fullest not everyday but ever second, do things right the first time, and
always give 110 percent. These four beliefs have guided some of my biggest life
decisions. Ive learned my beliefs from my parents, experience, and mistakes.
When I was a child my mother told me something I use to this very day, If you
cant change it dont worry about it. Worrying about the past is futile; the past can never
be altered or changed. It is set in stone and will remain there for the rest of your life. The
only thing we can do as human beings is learn from the past to help better our futures
which for some reason we have an incredible difficulty accomplishing. When I
performed poorly in marching band, I would dwell on the mistake, be it a wrong note or
incorrect step. By doing so I would often cause a chain reaction, leading myself to yet
another mistake in the next set, and a domino effect ensued. It is often said that history
doesnt repeat itself, man always does. People tend to hyper focus on the past so much to
the point that their own obsession is their undoing. Dont regret your past; you cant
change it so accept it, come to terms with it, and move on.

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Whenever I used to help clean the house, I would always try finding short cuts to
get the work done faster. Needless to say, my parents were never happy about how
incomplete my cleaning was. People tend to always give the bare minimum in life and do
very little of anything with the time they are given with on this planet. Then you have the
people that go above and beyond, doing great work for not just themselves but human
kind as a whole. It is difficult to tell when something is garbage or brilliance. Rightness is
determined on two perspectives: the artist and the critic. I personally believe that people
should always give 110 percent because unless you put all your blood, sweat, and tears
into your work; the composition, artwork, or ballad will feel incomplete to the artist.
Do others opinions really matter? my mother asked me that question so many
times in high school. The answer is no, because when you step back and look at the
whole picture. The unfortunate reality is people honestly dont care about the specifics. If
you always worry about whats wrong you wont see whats right. In the book, Catcher
in the Rye, Holden Caulfield ends up going insane trying to prevent something that like
others opinions are really insignificant, which is innocence. What really fascinates me is
how he describes the feeling, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff
I meant if theyre running and they dont look where theyre going I have to come out
from somewhere and catch them(Salinger 173).
Caulfield focused on one thing all the time and drove himself insane. He didnt
live life, he let it speed past and waste time. You should live life to its fullest not every
day but every second. The saying originally should be just every day, but why every day?
Time is valuable but when you dont count to the seconds, I feel like people waste time,
and once you run out of it you realize how much it was worth. People tend to realize how

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much they appreciate something only when it is gone. I began to appreciate how much I
cared about some of the places Ive lived and the people that I used to know. How do you
make the best of it? How do you make sure youre not wasting every year, month, day,
hour, minute, and second? The answer to those questions is coincidently another
question. That question is asked by Randy Pausch, Are you a Tigger or an
Eeyore?(Pausch). The best person that embodied Tigger in my life was Bobby Barbieri.
Bobby passed away when I was fifteen years old. In the time that I knew him, he
taught me basic life lessons and skills. Bobby taught me how to tie my shoes and how to
read an analog clock. While other skills took me more time; such as, proper table educate,
respecting women and service men, and how to be professional. He would always drop
everything to come and help me whenever I was in trouble. What astonishes me is he was
a childhood friend of my grandmother who I'd never heard her speak of to either my
mother or me. Yet he acted like he was one of the family the first day we walked into the
foundry he owned. After that it was all down hill from there. I would always tell Bobby
he was Tigger, and for a grown man in his fifties with the build of a Patriots defensive
lineman. He actually played into it. He would do the Tigger laugh so easily he could have
been the voice actor, and he would love to sing the song with me. However, my
grandmother would always tell us he was an Eeyore and was very pessimistic. I come
along with all this optimism and happiness and with in a few weeks he's laughing and
joyful like it was nothing. I am thankful that my family helped him go from Eeyore to
Tigger, and that we helped him feel like he had a family. I just wish we could have met
him sooner, yet he left an impression on all of us, one that we will keep till we are called
to leave this world. A quote from the book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People puts it

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the best way, One man asked another on the death of a mutual friend, How much did he
leave? His friend responded, He left it all. Pg. 99.
Each belief builds off the other and strengthens each other. The largest life
decisions I have made can be traced back to control, living, correctness, and expectations.
The four beliefs are embodied in life experience, and those experiences help me describe
my beliefs. However, most of these experiences were mistakes that helped me identify
these beliefs. These ideals have been ingrained in my life from the challenges Ive faced
up to this point.
Reflection
Looking back this was not a bad start for my first college essay and after revising
it I am really happy with the turn out. What I like most is this paper didnt ask you what
your beliefs are or what values you take into consideration. It could be compared to a list
of priorities but the words believe proclamation sound better to me.
I had a chance to really narrow down my ideas that I believe in and express why
and how they came to be. They are not all just from early in my life but even later on, and
that can be seen as well in my writing.
By far this is my second favorite essay in the three that I have written this
semester. I always like writing topics that make you questions what really matters to you.
It helps shape you to be a better person and grow to be respectable. These are the kinds of
things we need to learn now about ourselves because we will make some of our biggest
decisions based upon our beliefs.

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Works Cited
1. Salinger, J. D. The Cather in the Rye. New York: Bantam, 1966. Print.
2. Pausch, Randy. The Last Lecture. New York: Hyperion, 2008. Web.
3. Covey, Stephen R. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Wisdom and Insight
from Stephen R. Covey. Philadelphia: Running, 2000. Print.