My Purpose

Several of you have said that you can't think of what to write for this essay prompt.  I agree it can be a very challenging task if you refuse to be candid about yourself.  You have to forget about impressing.  You have to speak from the heart, and until you do, you are just going to drift aimlessly.  Perhaps the opening of my essay might help you see that you have to open yourself.  You know that I do not frequently share private emotions with you, but I am going to here.  It is only the opening because I don't want you to think your essay has to emulate mine.  It is your purpose...this is mine...

                I can remember it as if it were yesterday.  My mother stood in front of the wall display her eight children’s baby portraits.  She was introducing Sister Clare Francis to each of us.  She said, “This is Mary Ellen; she is my worker bee--very industrious yet so very classically beautiful.  This is Paulette; she is my peacemaker.  That lovely smile and gorgeous eyes can melt the coldest heart.  These are my twins—Nancy and Donna.  They are as talented as they are beautiful.  Nancy can sew and paint and draw and never had any lessons.  Donna can sing and play the piano.”  Her eyes went to my picture and I waited to hear those words that would tell just how my mother, the person’s whose opinion is paramount to an eight year old, saw me.  “And this is Kay.  She is our smart one.”  I was crushed.  Being smart was not what I wanted to hear.  I wanted to be beautiful and talented just like my older sisters.   After all, they were all smart, too.  They made great grades in school.  I was nothing then.  Nothing else could be said about me.  I just made good grades.  I had no purpose in life.  It took me many years of struggling with this thought to realize that my mother was in fact speaking the truth.   Many years later as I looked at my older sisters and the struggles they have endured, I knew I was blessed to be the smart one. 

                I watched my sister Mary Ellen be abused by her husband for over 20 years.  Her heart was no longer strong and she frowned and hated rather than walked like the classic beauty she was.  I watched my sister Paulette lose her lovely smile and bright eyes to years of being oppressed by marrying a man who had a heart so frozen in prejudice and hate  and the desire for wealth that even she could not melt it.  I watched Nancy and Donna struggle as young married women with children before they had found themselves.  I was the smart one because I learned my purpose was to be the one never to settle, never to give up believing in the good, never to sell myself short, and never to allow myself to be a victim of self-doubt.  In the process of doing these things, I learned my greatest purpose was to hold everyone else together as each of my sisters and my brother encountered weaknesses and troubles in life.  I am the anchor—the anchor that keeps the boat of my family afloat in the face of tempests.