There are some people that without ever having met, you just know. You watch their movie or hear their music and you just think “I relate to you; we could be friends, even.” You know facts about them and try to emulate their positive traits. This is most common with celebrities, specifically those who are masters of our individual trade. Athletes look up to other athletes, writers to other writers, businessmen to Donald Trump. As a writer –and a teenage girl- there are many people that I idolize and from them draw inspiration. I tried to think of the one person who inspired me the most, who handed me life’s lessons one at a time until I really felt that I found my footing. If you talk to as many people as I have, you’ll realize that this is nearly an impossible task.
I thought that I could cite Emily Dickinson, who made me first want to be a poet with “Hope is the Thing With Feathers,” or Mrs. Melanson who taught me to be who you are unapologetically, even if at times that means you have to be a little cynical. I thought about my mother, who –despite her shortcomings- implanted within me a set of morals that can’t be messed with, no matter who I talk to or what I do in my future. I started jotting down every Walt Disney fact that I know. How can one not draw inspiration from the original voice of Mickey himself?
But then I realized that maybe I don’t have to write a miniature feature on any one individual. We learn from one another all the time; that is the silver lining of constant human interaction. During the hum drum of day to day life, we steadily gain lessons from those that we watch on TV, those who we read in books or on websites, if we only keep our eyes and ears open.
-Savannah Thanscheidt, Web Editor