Sample “This I Believe” Essays

Sample One:

When you only have a dollar, buy an ice cream cone. I believe in the power of whimsy, caprice and momentary lapses in good judgment. Though my mother would be loath to admit it, she taught me this - that sometimes, usually fear-laced times, risk is your only currency.

When I was nine, my mother packed up her kids and fled a comfortable home, financial security and, after 25 years, my father’s tyranny. It was the late 1970s in a small town in Georgia, a place riddled with backyard gossip and unfriendly divorce laws. School was out for summer and we headed even deeper south to live near my mother’s large extended family, until, well, we just didn’t know. My mother had stayed home to raise her five children for the last 20 years and having not held a formal job during that time, had few marketable skills to provide for my sister and me, the youngest two still living at home. My mother’s family was not well off, but they were generous with all they had and helped my mother find a place to live rent-free, temporarily, while my grandmother’s overstocked kitchen would never let us starve. This communal spirit was new to me, as later would be public school, taking a bus, and wearing pants a hem too short after a rapid growth spurt. It would only take my mother a few years to safety pin the folds of her life into something she could live with, but in that time, I realized I’d been born to privilege, that poverty is shame, and that the best thrills in life arrive on impulse.

But it was that first hot hot summer of our departure that pinched us the hardest. I remember one Saturday in august and all we had in our cupboards was a box of Chef Boyardee Pizza mix and six potatoes. My mother had a lonesome $5 bill to her name, a half a tank of gas, and a flimsy promise of a check in the mail. Though she tried desperately to hide it, I saw that day that my mother was scared, the lump in her throat so tight her voice shook. But my mother knew that fear and prudence cannot share the same house. Fear will inevitably take center stage - bully its way to the limelight. In a panic, she set out to chase it away, as if she’d found a wild animal in her kitchen. So she made that box of pizza and a pan of home fries in one of my grandmother’s cast iron skillets, packed it in the backseat of our red Chrysler and drove us ten miles to Walker Park for a picnic. And for that one afternoon, we were frivolous and bold, eating our cupboards bare, burning gas needlessly, and with utter recklessness, spending half of those five precious dollars on ice cream, which was nothing if not restorative, whimsical and magic. (by Janan, 493 words)

Sample Two:

If I have one operating philosophy about life it is this: "Be cool to the pizza delivery dude; it's good luck." Four principles guide the pizza dude philosophy.
Principle 1: Coolness to the pizza delivery dude is a practice in humility and forgiveness. I let him cut me off in traffic, let him safely hit the exit ramp from the left lane, let him forget to use his blinker without extending any of my digits out the window or towards my horn because there should be one moment in my harried life when a car may encroach or cut off or pass and I let it go. Sometimes when I have become so certain of my ownership of my lane, daring anyone to challenge me, the pizza dude speeds by me in his rusted Chevette. His pizza light atop his car glowing like a beacon reminds me to check myself as I flow through the world. After all, the dude is delivering pizza to young and old, families and singletons, gays and straights, blacks, whites and browns, rich and poor, vegetarians and meat lovers alike. As he journeys, I give safe passage, practice restraint, show courtesy, and contain my anger.
Principle 2: Coolness to the pizza delivery dude is a practice in empathy. Let's face it: We've all taken jobs just to have a job because some money is better than none. I've held an assortment of these jobs and was grateful for the paycheck that meant I didn't have to share my Cheerios with my cats. In the big pizza wheel of life, sometimes you're the hot bubbly cheese and sometimes you're the burnt crust. It's good to remember the fickle spinning of that wheel.
Principle 3: Coolness to the pizza delivery dude is a practice in honor and it reminds me to honor honest work. Let me tell you something about these dudes: They never took over a company and, as CEO, artificially inflated the value of the stock and cashed out their own shares, bringing the company to the brink of bankruptcy, resulting in 20,000 people losing their jobs while the CEO builds a home the size of a luxury hotel. Rather, the dudes sleep the sleep of the just.
Principle 4: Coolness to the pizza delivery dude is a practice in equality. My measurement as a human being, my worth, is the pride I take in performing my job -- any job -- and the respect with which I treat others. I am the equal of the world not because of the car I drive, the size of the TV I own, the weight I can bench press, or the calculus equations I can solve. I am the equal to all I meet because of the kindness in my heart. And it all starts here -- with the pizza delivery dude.
Tip him well, friends and brethren, for that which you bestow freely and willingly will bring you all the happy luck that a grateful universe knows how to return.
(by Sarah Adams, 504 words)
You can find more sample essays at: http://www.thisibelieve.org and http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=453813