Along with many other spring events, Tolerance Week was cancelled in 2020 due to the coronavirus outbreak.
Casualties of the cancellation were the Tolerance Week Essay Contest and the Ella Holtzen Tolerance Week Art Contest (named in honor of the 2016 Art Contest winner who died with her brother Beck in an ice-related auto accident in January).
One essay entry arrived in our in-box early. The assignment: Please express how the practice of tolerance will make the world a better place. It was written by Isabel Martinez.
With Tolerance
Isabel Martinez, Bishop Heelan High School sophomore
WithI would be able to look at those around me and be happy with their individual nature while also loving and accepting that my own nature is beautiful;
I would be able to stop masking the parts of me that don’t fit into the social norm and recognize that the unique aspects of my personality are what make me lovable;
I would be able to view the world through a new perspective in which being different is not equivalent to causing trouble.
With tolerance
People will be able to go home to their bed and not have to worry about whether or not people will like who they are tomorrow but actually get rest;
People will be able to walk down the street without worry about the person on the other sidewalk yelling at them because who they are in that moment is who they are at their best;
People will be able to go to work, church, the mall, the movies, or just have fun without having to worry that someone will make that day their last.
With tolerance
Children won’t have to learn how to put on gas masks, hide in closets, or barricade doors because our nation and its people’s actions will never go so out of hand;
Children will never have to suffer as they did in Germany in the 1940s, in Vietnam from the 1950s to the 1970s, or as they do now in countries like Syria, Afghanistan or Iraq because children should never be part of a war plan;
Children will never have to wait until they’re older to understand why their parents are struggling through a hard time because there will be no hard times to understand.
With tolerance, everything would change.
Everyday life and international affairs would face the same effects. People would be nicer, society would be kinder, and war would be over. Everyone would be able to breathe without facing the consequences of existence.
With tolerance, you could live.
