Do you have a role model?

Yes

1 of 2

by Rebecca Carvalho

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When I was twelve years old, I lived in my own innocent world of books and games with my cousins. Although not spoiled, I was an only child who grew up surrounded by all the protection a modest family could provide. Above all, I was profoundly loved, and deeply guarded from the dangers a big town could offer to a nave young girl.

The same ingenuous world I lived in, though, found its own way to teach me important lessons. Lessons, to be honest, that I only understand from what I read and can barely imagine what truly meant in real life. My rather bookish personality drove my hands to the well-known diary of Anne Frank, and its first lines made Anne more than my role model, but a surreal friend I care for as if I had met her from the time she walked among us.

Anne was a young girl who loved writing; that is the best way I can describe her. By the time I read her diary, I already knew I wanted to be a journalist and a writer, therefore it was not a surprise I thought I could associate myself with her. My foreign friend, though, had more things happening in her life that made her permanently distant from everything I knew: She not only was a precocious writer, but she had written her diary when hiding in a secret annex from Hitler's era of terror.

What impressed me the most was her constant optimism, even under the worst circumstances a human being could suffer. Anne was a Jewish girl during a time when prejudice took over and promoted anti-Semitic ideas and actions, and still she found love and beauty in life; she found hope, and a strong desire to live and be heard. She made plans for after the war, and remained productive until the last minute she had access to a pen, paper, and ink. She looked great, and yet so simple. Anne was just a girl, however a girl with a voice strong enough to be heard even decades after her physical death the same voice, spoken through her words, that kept her alive until today.

Anne was a watershed in my life, and under her influence, I started to give special attention to my writing ability and my moral conduct. The nave girl who had lived most part of her life surrounded by walls and protective relatives left home to live by herself in a foreign country, and study to become a war correspondent journalist: the way I found to be useful and give voice back to minority groups; the way I found to honor Anne's memory, and the memories of all the ones who had suffered, suffer, or will suffer because of wars or other kinds of sorrow.

I still do not know what awaits me, or whether I will be strong like Anne to cope with human emotions I have never experienced though I shall remain breathing, walking, and fighting for what I think is just. Fighting like Anne fought fighting to be heard; fighting for a better world.

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