Roller coaster

Life is full of ups and downs, It's more or less a roller coaster. One minute your up high as the birds, then your sent down hill right into a loop. We find ourselves holding on to what we've got and go with the track; I think of that as courage, courage to stay with the track even if it looks scary ahead. Hope on the other hand is what keeps the roller coaster rolling, we hope that the ride won't break or that it could go faster. When the ride slows to a halt we feel relief, and later can fantasize about the ride and the rush that was experienced. The significance of courage and hope is that it is an essential mixture to one's perseverance in life. I have seen first hand when my old man had unfortunately lost courage. His train didn't know where to go, no ups no downs, numb to the fact he lost hope, finishing off at the nearest station around the corner. Through the thick smoke I have seen that courage and hope are essential to the wellness of human beings. 

In this short blog I will be expressing how the significance of courage and hope is important in a time like this. It is very important to have hope in a time like this because that's all you can do. With this pandemic going around hope and courage is very important because you have hope that this will end in a peaceful way and courage to push through and continue on with life. This event was very unexpected and happened out of the blue.

I believe that courage and hope is also a bad thing because you have hope for the best but not receive it. Courage can be a bad thing in an event like this because you have the courage to do something about it, but you are unable to do anything. For some people this is horrible because they lack the hope that this will be okay in the end. Most people in today's society lack courage and I think that is because we go outside and see people panicking. I think this is because they have lost all courage that this is just going to be a two month period. In day to day life we must have both qualities which would be courage and hope.

Like I've said throughout this paper the significance of courage and hope is to one day look at the past and realize we lived through so many hardships and we survived it. If we didn't have hope it will make the situation worse than it already is.   

-Kaydince

The Recipe of My Life

I am a guy from a small town in the Philippines. I moved to Canada so I would have a better chance to have a beautiful life. When I am hungry my roots do not lie and all I want is juicy and delicious chicken, so I will use chicken to illustrate my point. I believe that love is my “Main Dish", true food for our soul, and everything else is a side dish. Without feeling the love in our hearts our very soul will starve, and it leaves us in a great risk of hurting ourselves. At this point you might think “in  what crazy world does a chicken have to do with love?”. Well, in an odd way it dawned on me that, as crazy and it really sounds, love is not far from chicken and here’s why...chicken satisfies my physical hunger and then love satisfies my soul’s hunger. I am in charge of how much effort I am going to put in it and the quality of the ingredients I put in my chicken to make it as delicious as it is. It takes time, quality, patience, passion and hard work.

I found love almost 2 years ago, and I realized that love is not the beginning of our actions, quite the contrary it is the end results of how we choose to think and act. If we wait to feel love in order to act lovingly, we might never "taste" true love. The more often I put quality ingredients in the food I make, the better it will taste when I eat it. So just as chicken, if you put good stuff in your relationship, instead of waiting for the good stuff to come to you from the other person, the better your relationship will be.

-Aaron

Facing the Fear with Courage and Hope

Fear is something that makes us feel uncomfortable. We might not be able to face it because we think fear would destroy the effort we put in and life might get even worse. People will escape their fear so that they can stay in their comfort zone forever, but unfortunately, fear is reality, we have to face it. Our comfort zone shield will finally be broken and at this time, there is no way back. Fear keeps pushing us to the cliff. If we still compromise with it, we will finally fall into the endless darkness. If life is controlled by fear then people are “dead” inside. In order to avoid it happening, we need to hold these two weapons - courage and hope - against the greatest enemy in our life. 

I remember when I was in junior high school, I had an addiction to video games for a long time. At that time, my life was easy, but also very meaningless. I went to school and back home to play video games for the rest of the day. To be honest, my life was totally absorbed by video games, I kept thinking about video games all the time. My friends started to stay away from me, and my body was sick. I can hardly imagine how skinny I was at that time; my appearance was terrible: black eyes, dry lips, dirty face, and my hair was a mess. My arms were so thin that I couldn’t even hold a 50 pound box. My parents tried to stop me, but I just couldn’t. I became scared and hopeless. I knew what I was doing was so wrong. I had to make some changes. I needed to get back to common life. I tried not to play for two days, but on the third day I was so excited when I saw the screen, I couldn’t help myself and I picked up the controller. After that, the two days effort was wasted. I felt so disappointed and guilty. I wished I had my hands cut off so that I would not be able to play video games.

I started over again,  I started to accept new things in my life. My friends saw my change and decided to help me go through this. I was so glad that I had some friends who could save my life. We studied our homework and played sports together, and staying with them was happy and pleasant. As the days went through, my methods to get rid of my video game addiction became harder and harder. In the 18 day I finally couldn’t control myself. I became excited and manic. The only thing I wanted was to play video games even for a minute. The voice from the deepest heart told me, "No". I was scared. I didn’t know what to do. I locked myself in a room and I leaned on the wall. Every time when I had a single thought about video games I would punch my face. I kept telling myself I could do it. Slowly I was getting tired and fell asleep. The next day was a sunny day, I woke up and felt relaxed and when I thought about video games it made no attraction to me anymore. I knew I defeated it.

Through this experience, I realize that when we are facing the fear,  our hope and courage will help us defeat our fears. When I was in the most difficult time in my life, I decided to step forward, and my courage gave me this chance to start. My hope kept me putting in effort during this process.

I believe that if I am full of hope and courage, I will be able to face any fear in the future and defeat it.

-Jack

It's a Cake

You're making a cake, and you can choose all these different options for types of cake you can make. Chocolate cake. Birthday cake. Ice Cream cake. Any kind of cake.

And then there's the option to dump bleach into the batter and give up.

It's not a very good option and it doesn't make much sense

But 

Its

There

And it doesn't go away. 

It never leaves

At every point in your life it stays to be a thing you can do. 

And sometimes. 

Sometimes you grab the bleach, and you hold it over the bowl for a little bit

And you put it down

You put it down

And you focus back on your cake

But you thought about it

And you spent so much time thinking about it that you forgot to make your cake

And now 

everyone around you that you see 

is almost all done making their cake 

and all you've done is almost pour bleach into a bowl.

So now what

You don't have a cake. You don't have anything.

You have nothing.

You are nothing.

So why not pour the bleach?

WHY NOT POUR THE BLEACH

Your screaming at yourself

You’re hating that you're doing it but you're doing it

You’re screaming at yourself constantly.

The mere existence of the option of pouring the bleach

Has made you want to pour that bleach.
But you don't.

You don't know why you don't. You can't answer the question being screamed at you

But

You

Dont.

That's all that matters.

And eventually you start making your cake.
It takes a while but you get there

And you just do it.

You’re doing great

You’re going to make the best cake

And you're getting so far.

As far as you can 

Then you come into a problem

You don't know what kind of cake you're going to make.

You spent so much time thinking about the bleach

 that you just assumed that eventually you would pour that bleach.

So all you have left is too

Pour

The

Bleach.

https://vocal.media/psyche/growing-up-suicidal-and-how-it-has-affected-me-today

-Tyler

Growth Through Hope and Courage

I believe I had the courage and hope to become a better person, by the help of my friends and family. They had hope in me to go out and try my best, even if that means I came back in failure. They pushed me to keep going when I was too tired, but they believed I could make it a little bit further. They gave me the courage to keep going out and try my best. I had to have courage to play basketball, and my friends were there to encourage me. Playing basketball is where I feel I have the most courage because I can just be myself on the court and my teammates would appreciate it. Basketball gives me the courage to get out there and meet new competition. Not knowing what my opponent is capable of makes basketball fun, it makes me vulnerable to new talent. The competitive nature of the game makes the game exciting, and rushes a ton of emotions through my system. To feel those emotions again, I have to hope in myself, and the courage to put myself back out there again until I get it right. Having hope in myself is something that no one can take away from me. It all begins with believing in myself and learning my own capabilities to use for the future. The significance of courage and hope is learning new things, not to just cope, but also gaining new knowledge to use and spread in the future.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCvmsMzlF7o

My life has been shaped on and off the court, by others having hope in me and by having the courage to put myself out there. The above link is to a TedTalk called “ The Power of Vulnerability,” It helped me develop my ideas that vulnerability is the core to everything you feel in life.

-Shay

Foresight

Ignorance is bliss they say, and that statement was especially true when I was growing up. I never could be dead set on what I wanted to do, or be when I grew up.  I always assumed it would work out for me in the end, but now I know that to be false and that I will have to work hard to get far in life. At age sixteen I had a job where I would sand car parts every day after school and everyday full time during summer.  It was an amazing opportunity to branch out and find a career that I enjoyed. As time went on work got slower, so there was a lot less to do around the place and I often would be doing many small things to keep me busy through the day.  At the time I never thought too much of the rapidly declining amount of work that needed to be done. The situation became very clear to me the day I was let go and I will never forget that car ride back home; I should have seen the whole thing coming. With car payments due every month  I became devastated watching every dollar I had saved up disappear and any ounce of hope for the future had been reduced to nothing more than fear. It was hard finding another job.  I never was a "people person" making it especially hard to try to sell myself. It had been awhile and I was starting to lose motivation. It wasn’t until one day where out of nowhere I told myself “what's the worst that can happen?” and drove over to a golf course handed in my resume and with enough courage proceeded to check back in every week to see if they had reviewed it. And after two weeks I had been hired

The Significance of Courage & Hope

Everyone I surround myself with always tries to tell me how I should live my life. I had a dream, a dream to one day become a professional Golfer, to make it to the PGA tour - every Golfer's dream. I wanted the young kids to look up to me as their role model, and I wanted to be everyone’s favourite. This past summer I finally had my opportunity to take my game to the next level, as a collage out in San Diego reached out to me and gave the opportunity to move out there and learn more about the game of golf. This collage opens up doors for me so I can get noticed by a Division 1 College. This is finally what I've been waiting for my entire life and I was so excited, but as the summer went on I thought a lot about it and I started second guessing myself, “Am I really good enough?”, “Can I play with the bigger, stronger, and smarter kids?”, This is what I wanted my whole life I thought. Let's just say reality hit me. I've been to tournaments in Phoenix and those kids play all year long they are a different caliber of player, kind of like they were bred to play Golf. I’m just some random kid from a little city in Alberta, Canada. I realized that college would be the farthest I’d make it. I am a really good golfer and myself and everyone else knows that, but I don't want to try and live out a dream if it may come crashing down.  I made a big decision by myself with no help from anyone not to go and not to try and live my dream. My friends and family members were all very confused on why I made that decision, but I knew it was the right decision and that’s what really matters. Now you may be asking yourselves what this has to do with Courage and Hope? I believe that there is still hope for me to become something, something I can wake up every morning and be excited for, something I truly love doing. Don't get me wrong I love Golf with all my heart, but I’m afraid if I try and take it to the next level and start taking my game really serious that my love and passion for the game will run out, just like my love for hockey ran out all those years ago. It took a lot of courage to make that decision, but I’m happy because I know my path still has hope and I’m excited to see where this new chapter of my life takes me after high school.

-Sam

My Passion In Life

The passion that I have for basketball inspires me to keep going, no matter how hard life is.This passion of mine helped me become more confident and prouder of how I view myself. As the time went by, I discovered many characteristics that taught me to strive for progress and to have space for improvement. Ever since I learned to play basketball in grade middle school, I have driven myself to get better each day and taught myself a few techniques that made me stand out from everyone else. I have worked hard for 7 years to get where I am right now, and it has been an amazing opportunity to become a part of a program at Cathaolic Central High School. The people that I have surrounded myself with made such a positive impact, they were my inspiration and motivation. I’ve met a tremendous amount of people through basketball who still encourage me to grow not only as a basketball player, but also as a responsible young gentleman. These are the people who have been my coach and people who I played basketball with. I really believe that without my friends, family and my coaches I would not have been able to achieve my aspirations for basketball, because of them I'm always determined to play and work hard. The very sad thing about basketball is saying goodbye. Last month was very hard for me and all the seniors who played for CCH because we had to play our last game and we had to say goodbye to our High school basketball career and move on to a new chapter. The last thing that I would want right now is to say goodbye to basketball as it taught me lessons that I never imagined I would learn.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_fDhqRk_Ro

-Raphael

In the picture, I can say it was my best basketball season in CCH. It is not because I'm a senior on this team, but it is because the people who surrounded me while playing for this team. These people really helped me to be the best version of myself and helped me grow not only on the court, but off the court. I really believed that I would always have my basketball IQ and knowledge for the rest of my life. As a basketball player and as a sign of respect who recently passed away, for Kobe Bryant I will say mamba out. 

Anxiety

Anxiety is the feeling of apprehension about what's to come in your life. It makes you overthink, worry, and fear about what's coming. As a teenager, the start of adulthood, the start of change scares me because being a grown up comes with big responsibilities: finance, health, companionship, freedom and time. I have to worry about being late to work, my rent, to have fun with my life, and to keep track of what I have to do next. When I was a kid I didn't have to worry about anything because my grandma and my mom were always there for me, and they gave me what I needed such as love, support, and money. My grandma used to tell me to never doubt a person's capability of doing things. I live by these words, but somehow I never did love myself and was never proud of what I had accomplished. I was always scared of not making my parents proud, of not being good enough from both inside and out meaning my appearance and my personality. I did always try hard for people to like me, but at the same time judgement overfill my mind. Because of these judgments I never had the courage to approach new people, or make friends, as I was always waiting for them to talk to me. In reality there's nobody judging me, but as a teenager who lives in a world where what matters is how a person looks, fear gets the best of me and I just can't help but doubt and hate myself. 

Through time, I have realized that when you break your silence, people start coming in your life while fear starts to fade. It took me years to tell my mother and I expected the worst, but I gathered all the courage in the world and told her what I felt, all my fears, and she said that I was perfect and that I should never try to be what I am not because she loves me no matter what. By then I realized that looks didn’t matter, the fears that built up inside me didn't matter because I have a reason to feel happy, to feel love, to have courage and to find hope. Breaking my silence to my friends and my loved ones helped me get over the fears that took over my life. 

In my journals I wrote about the feelings of happiness, the reason to live and to be proud of what has happened. I expressed what I felt through a paper and a pencil and since then I realized that having to know yourself gives you a lot of reason to live and not fear about what's going to happen because when there is fear, there is hope. For example, Shawshank redemption, character Andy Duffresne, feared but he never did lose hope on freedom and to fulfill his dream life.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1W_O_iBQgVg

-Kim

-

The Different Faces of Hope and Courage

Courage - stay strong and be brave. Hope - stay calm and do not lose what you believe in and what you think is right; those things can come to us in all kinds of ways. We can get it from within or a simple object can give us all that we need. Everyone is different in their  perception of hope and courage. For me I think it is a very good thing to live by these guidelines. I do not think I would be able to do some of the journeys I have accomplished in my lifetime without following these boundaries. Like when I had to go to Vegas to play volleyball when my dad was in the hospital and me traveling such a far distance not knowing what was going to happen. The hope my teammates showed me that things would get better and playing that sport at that moment was what I really needed by getting my mind off it and making an honest effort for not only me but for my coaches and my fellow players. The strength they had was what I was lacking and for them to do that showed me how much impact a team can have on an individual player.

Now social media is a big thing in our day and age. Everything gets put either on Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter or possibly Facebook. Now some of those apps are very old but we need to remember that once something is online it is forever online. You are probably wondering how does this relate to courage and hope and the significance of it? Well, let me tell you to put something on the web takes courage alone to know that there is a good chance everyone around the world can see it. Even if they do not know you, but find your name or account number, it's a risk that most people do not think of. But to myself and maybe others these are one of those things we just do and not really think of the outcome too much. So, for every time you or a friend want to post something like a video, or a picture make sure you trust them. When myself or a friend puts a picture online I have hope that the person posting the picture won't do any harm to it.   

Providing a sense of achievement does not just come in doing something good but overcoming a fear and having strength and will power to deal with the issue that is right in front of us. We can all do that if we so desire. In English 30 we watched a movie called “Shawshank Redemption” and the main character Andy was able to achieve certain things because of his willingness to do so. That is just like the life we all live in today; we can choose to be a part of something greater and work up the hope to get there plus the courage we need to make it happen for ourselves. If there is one message that I can get across to you all, I believe that it is this: we ask for courage and hope a lot more than we think and we use it a lot in times of distress. It is said so often nowadays, that we forget if we really mean to use it in that context but I really encourage that if we understand the true meaning and how it helps our family or society we can make great changes in the years to come.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7_A_FKCsVc&feature=youtu.be
 The following link shows hope and courage in my opinion because the people he refers to put themselves out there and on the line to change the world and be judged by the entire nation which takes a lot  of hope and courage

-Kendyl

The Search

During this Covid-19 pandemic I was one of the few courageous people that was able to find a job for myself. I was able to get employment at 7-11 stocking shelves. It is quite difficult to find a job with all the risks of the Covid-19 virus. There is the risk of not being able to keep a job because of reduced hours or shutdowns due to the restrictions put in place by our government that is trying to keep us safe. Most places that are offering jobs are considered an essential service, such as grocery stores, gas stations and pet stores. This generally means that people need these businesses to continue operating in order to survive. Also, this generally means exposing you to hundreds of people that may have the virus. That is a huge risk to take that takes lots of courage to face. All these things create a lot of doubts, fears and anxiety of the unknown. Even with all of the doubts and fears I had to muster the courage to find a job. 

I also needed to keep hope in finding a job. There weren't exactly a lot of jobs on the market because of the restrictions in place. I was applying to as many jobs I could hoping that someone would contact me and say that they needed me. I had doubts that anyone would at all. Things were changing from day to day. More and more stores were either closing or laying of staff due to lack of demand, but I had hope that I would find a job. 

https://www.alberta.ca/coronavirus-info-for-albertans.aspx#goa-grid23425

-Katie

Overcoming the Odds

In life we’re told many times by several people we can’t do it, or we’ll never make it and that we have to accept the negative people and accept being told "no" because nobody is ever getting a "yes" all the time. So we take that as motivation to strive and hope for a way to prove them wrong.

I’ve been living in Lethbridge all of my life and have met all kinds of people with all different emotions and attitudes: negative, positive, sad, happy, angry and depressed. Each person I’ve met on my journey here I’ve taken them as either a blessing or a lesson. I’ve learned that people can change up on you at any point in time and that’s the scary thing with life, we can trust and believe all we want, but in the end it really comes down to that person you trust and believe in and if they’re loyal and truthful. 

I’ve been playing hockey for 15 years of my life and it’s the same as I said before, every person I’ve met and played with in this sport is a blessing or a lesson. I’ve always had a goal when I was younger to play up in higher levels of hockey like AA and A and I’ve went through many emotions trying to achieve it. I’ve came across the negative people saying I’d never make it because I'm not this and I’m not that, but never once did I stop. I kept going and I wanted to prove everyone wrong. I stayed up countless nights stressing and worrying and trying to find ways to be better than everyone else, but really the only way to be better than anyone is a good attitude and positive work ethic.

I’ve run into situations in the dressing rooms arguing about skill and not making a team and that’s what I explained in the first part of this, we run into situations in life all the time basically everyday, but hockey has taught me to overcome any of the challenges in my life. My biggest challenge has been overcoming my challenge of my weight. Ever since I’ve been young I’ve always wanted to be the fit kid and the fastest kid in the class, but I never could and I never understood until I got older and realized It’s because I’m a big guy and the others aren’t, so I started wanting to be like them. This is where hockey and my daily life come in because hockey people said I couldn’t make teams because I was too big and slow and you get chirped about it in your daily life for no reason because that’s people, that’s what they do because they see your success or your popularity and try to bring you down to their level. I never wanted to be that low and kept my hopes high to overcome these negative people to see a positive in my life.

Hope is a huge word to describe my journey through all of this because I’ve hoped to escape the people and escape the negativity, but all I truly had to hope for was a positive mindset and hope I could overcome the negative people and negative odds. I hoped for it all and with just as little as hoping for it...it worked. I became the captain of my AA team my first year in AA and I will never forget it. I never once rubbed it into anybody’s face or bragged about it, I just let life go on and let them see my success and hope they’d take my struggle as a lesson. I will always love to tell this story to many because hope is all we need to overcome any obstacles or any negative people or situations we run into in our lives.

-Kadon

Personal Growth

Something I’m passionate about is personal growth. Personal growth is what keeps me going forward every day and it’s what makes me have confidence in myself. When I wake up in the mornings nowadays I look forward to a new day, everyday. I used to wake up feeling like there was no point in trying to do my best because I wasn’t building self growth and I used to blind myself on the things and lies people told me. I wasn’t getting along with my teachers, parents, and friends but as time went I’ve been working on myself more than anything. I stopped caring about the things around me as much as I did before. I can now overcome my fears which is something I would’ve never done before. I believe if everyone worked on personal growth people would get along with others more and there would be less violence in the world. If I didn’t work on personal growth I feel like I'd be a different person than I am now. Personal growth helped me with many things such as maturity. When I get stressed I now know how to manage it and not take it out on others who didn’t do anything to me. I used to make many bad life decisions that weren’t leading me on the right path. I also know how to make the right decisions and I can handle peer pressure well now. I don’t listen to the bad things people tell me, I just do what’s best for myself. I’m still not where I want to be, but everything takes time, and nothing changes overnight. I’m trying to follow my dreams and be anything in life. I’ve had many examples in my life of the type of person I don’t want to grow up and be. Life is short and full of challenges and that is why I believe I need to do my best and not waste my time on trying to be someone I'm really not.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EExCJxdIbMU

- Jonathan

The Bad Guy

We all have that special person that helps us through times of distress. For me it's my Dad, but for so long I was told he was the bad guy when my parents divorced. I believed the lies of “He doesn’t love you” and “He won’t come back for you”. My parents got divorced when I was around the age of nine. My memories of those days are blurred as I took them for granted or just wanted to forget them. Since those lies were planted in my head I can only seem to remember the bad times. The times I was left planted on my bed crying. From the age 9-14 I always saw him as a ‘bad guy’. After my 15th birthday I started to break through the lies and started to get closer to my Dad. We started to have more heart to heart conversations and I started to learn more about him. After a lot of deep conversations he started to teach me more and more life skills that my single mother couldn’t. I continued to want to learn and know more about my Dad so started to run to his house as a stunt to stay longer than the two weekends a month. It took me two months of running to his house for my Mom to finally give in to me moving there full time. After I moved there full time there was a bit of bad blood with my Mom, as she took it as betrayal where I saw it as a chance to grow. Even with the bad blood my Dad was there to help and guide me on how to deal with it correctly and fairly for both parties. Without my Dad guiding me through this stressful time I would still be dealing with it to this day. After living with my Father for two years now I still continue to learn things that will help me for the rest of my life.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yERildSsWxM

-Ethan

The Courage & Hope That Will Not Disappoint Us

It seems like whenever we have big dreams fear will always come knocking on our door, stopping us from moving forward and killing the dreams inside.

It took me a long time to finally realize that fear is just a small shadow appearing to be super big.   

Growing up in Israel I used to fear a lot whenever the enemies would throw bombs on us trying to kill everyone in the country. It was hard especially whenever we’d hear about bombs in the nearby cities, we would think that maybe we are next and although there were times of peace, the fear inside stopped us from enjoying the moment. That fear consumed every part of  my life to the point were I couldn’t see anything good in my life; I thought that there was no way I'd ever get to live a good life, or I would wonder if I would live at all. My other greatest fear was the future. What will happen, where am I going to be, or am I ever going to succeed and get out of this life? But God has commanded us to be hopeful and courageous. In the book of Joshua God says: “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid. Do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you where you go”(Joshua 1:9). The bible promised that if we have hope then our hope will not disappoint us or put us to shame.

Everything I feared in the past didn’t happen. I am alive and peaceful and although I still don’t know what the future holds, I know that God holds the future, and he is the Beginning and the End.  I am encouraging everyone to have the courage to believe that the best is always yet to come and to have hope that their dreams can come to pass. Fear is just "False Evidence Appearing Real", but faith is "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen". We may not see a way out, but God can part the sea and make a way for us. My happiness came back the moment I stopped fearing everything and trusted God more because hope and courage bring joy and happiness. I believe that the best life a person could have is a life full of hope and courage.

-Diana

Fighting With My Monsters

A monster is a person who tells us we are not good enough or we have no purpose in life. In life 

we all have a monster we run from. These monsters could be found anywhere, they could be on 
our phone through social media, they could be in our schools and they could be even found in 
our own homes, but the only way we can overcome these monsters is through hope and a
courage. If we have courage we can stand up for ourselves to tell these monsters to go away 
or to stop, to tell them that we have a purpose in life and we are good enough. All of these examples remind me of my personal experience with a monster, a monster who told me I could never play with my friends  in my own neighbourhood, a monster twho stole my bike twice and a monster who beat me up for who I was. This monster was known as the neighbourhood bully. A bully who I always tried to impress, but it always ended up with me getting a bloody nose or running back home into my moms arms with tears rolling down my face.  I thought it was impossible to make peace with my monster, my bully, but one day my Mom sat me down and told me about a thing called hope and courage, well not really, she told me about making peace and about telling the bully how I feel and how he makes me feel. But I told my Mom, "He won't listen to me, and he will probably just beat me up again". My Mom replied with, "just have hope and you will get what you want”. The next day I gathered up the courage to go over to the bully's door and knock.  I was greeted with a, “What the hell do you want?” With all the courage in me I told him how I felt; I told him that I was tired of him always beating up on me. I told him how I couldn't even make a friend in the neighbourhood because of him. I told him that every night I went to sleep I cried because of him. He looked at me with a disappointed face and I asked him, "Mason can we just be friends?" He looked around and then he looked back at his Mom and then he asked me if  I wanted to go for a bike ride. I believe that if I didn't have the courage  to go and knock on his door I wouldn't be able to make peace with my bully and if my Mom didn't tell me to have hope I wouldn't be able to write this story.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rGtYs8cRhs

-Chandler

My passion isn’t necessarily something that I searched for, or something that I decided to like. I knew this passion was something that was always a part of me. It was so apparent to me at a young age that this is what drives me, what sets me apart from everyone else and what brings genuine happiness to my life. Since I was born I have been attached to my dad, and he had raised me to be whoever I wanted to be. When I was five I wanted to be in ballet, so he let me try a ballet class. When I was 11, I wanted to play basketball, so I played basketball. I even decided to curl for a year..but none of those things worked out, all I wanted to do was go camping so we could play in the mud on our quads, come home and wash our cars in the driveway and drive around until the sun came up. This was my passion. 

Once a year, every summer Street Machine Weekend comes around. It is my favourite weekend of the entire year, and the best part about being off of school for two months was this weekend. Every July my dad and I would clean up our cars and get ready to have the best night of the summer. We had so much fun watching the classic cars from the 60’s doing burnouts with no remorse as they cruised past a cop, or the Japanese cars from the 90’s drifting around corners and making everyone grin; the teenagers caused all the ruckus past midnight illegally street racing and cruising around with friends. 

These nights had such an influence on me that now as an adult, all I do is dream about building the fastest, loudest and most beautiful cars to show off to the crowds in the warm summer evenings. I’m proud of my passion, it is my entire life, not something I do on the weekends or occasionally throughout the year. This is something that I want to do for the rest of my life, and pass on to my children the same way my dad passed it on to me.

https://youtu.be/8p3NdHcceLw

-Cassie