my team for freeze tag. I had horses so everyone always wanted to come to my house, and I had a sister who was in high school….the fastest way to getting friends!
One day my friends and I were playing our usual recess game of freeze tag, when all of sudden someone yells, “Hey! Something is going on!” I look over my shoulder and sure enough, a group has formed about a hundred feet away. As I run over to the group it doesn’t take long to notice who was in the middle. It’s Karen.
Karen was one of my classmates, and I knew her better than most kids did.
She had a rough life. Her dad was gone and a mom that was never around.
When I was younger, I never saw anything really wrong with Karen. I knew she learned at a slower pace and needed a little extra help, but to me she
was no different. After all, she liked the color pink and kittens, she thought our classmate Cody was cute and she wanted to be an actress someday. She was my classmate; she was Karen.
But that day, I began to see Karen wasn’t like me in how she was treated. The kids on the playground had formed a circle around her and had begun to lightly push her and tease her by poking her and waving their arms. Then they began to call her names like reject, retard, and tell her she was nothing and a nobody.
I immediately wanted to scream and yell at them. “What if you knew what it was like to grow up like Karen, would you be so mean? What if you knew she couldn’t help it?”
But then, I began to selfishly worry about me, “What if they knew? What if they knew I was related to someone like Karen? What if they knew that Clay, my brother and my best friend, had special needs just like Karen?” But did I say anything to stop them? No, I hid my feelings from them. Because then, in their eyes, I would be like Karen. Not cool and not perfect.
How many times in our lives do we do that? How many times a day do we do that? We hide something about our- selves. We hide our families, our insecurities, our future plans, who we have a crush on, or things about our past because we so scared of what other people will think. I love Clay so much; yet, I used to hide him, because I thought it would be easier than dealing with what people said.
We think that by hiding ourselves life will be easier for us, but really it does just the opposite. It makes life harder. It’s exasperating to pretend all the time, to put up that front, that show of someone we’re not. Hiding, being someone we’re not makes life harder.
Now, I know you all are thinking, “Yeah Jessie, I should be myself and not hide who I am, but how do I do that? It’s just not that easy.”
And you know what; I wish I could make it easy for you. Reality is this…there is no quick fix, no easy answer to it. Deep down each one of us can sense when we’re hiding. We know when we are being true to ourselves, or when we are being someone we aren’t. And it’s hard to do; gosh it can be so hard to do sometimes. But no one can write our stories, live our life, have the influence we are meant to have but us….we are the only ones that can do that!
Hiding your newfound passion? Tell everyone you know that you can’t wait to return to the family farm.
Worried about what people will say when you think the jokes on the new kid are a little mean? Stand up for him and be-friend him, let people know you care about other’s feelings.
You’re hiding your family because you think they’re a little weird or different? Look around, no family is normal and chances are your friends think the same thing about theirs!
You want to get involved in a school activity but your friends have no interest in it? Sign up, get involved, and enjoy it!
Don’t let your friends dictate your life.
When we quit hiding, quit asking “What if they knew?” and start showing people who we really are, it is amazing how much it will do for ourselves. But it is even more amazing is how much it will do for those around us.
Now, I will be the first person to say I am proud to be from South Dakota, I am proud to be a farm girl, and that I am proud to be an FFA member. Oh, and by the way, I love agriculture!
And because of these loves, there is one other thing I love…my family’s cattle feedlot. Ladies and gentleman, this is my family’s operation. I was raised here. I was taught here. I learned how to ride a horse here. I learned the joys and discomforts of working alongside family here. I learned what it was like to be on the bottom of the totem pole. I learned the pride that comes from working in agriculture. I learned the satisfaction of a hard day’s work. I learned it was ok to expect the best in others and how to treat people as you wish to be treated. Most importantly, I learned that someday I wanted to take over this cattle feedlot.
Throughout this year, I missed home a lot. You know how some people carry pictures of family and grandkids with them? Well, I carried these pictures with me this year. And I was never slow to share my family’s operation with others – just ask my teammates or my Japanese host family! I was never trying to brag or show off what my family had. I was just so proud.
So, when someone would ask what my family did for a living, I would whip out the pictures and start explaining things to them about the operation and they would ask questions and I would keep explaining and I would just get so excited telling them about it just like I am with you.
But then I would remember, and I would think, “What if they knew?” What if they knew that after 26 years of being in business, after 26 years of pouring our blood, sweat, and tears into this place, that we had to go out of business?
What if they knew that due to new environmental regulations we couldn’t meet, we were forced to close the first of September? What if they knew that on September 16th this year, I watched as the family feedlot was sold off piece by piece? All of a sudden what had been so picture perfect wasn’t any longer and once again, I found myself hiding. I found this out last December and I wouldn’t even tell my closest friends until May. Why wouldn’t I tell them? Because I asked, “What if they knew?” If they knew, would they still think we were credible in agriculture, especially the beef industry?
Even though I knew that I should be open and comfortable and show people that this is me; that this is what my fam- ily is going through… it was hard.
Now for some of us, it isn’t our family going out of business. For some of us, it’s might be the shame we feel because we didn’t get a chapter office, that our parents are going through a divorce, that our house isn’t as nice as our friends, that we lost our job, or that school is one huge struggle for us.
All of us have different things that are really hard for us to share. For me, showing people that I was not a perfect officer was really hard, letting my classmates see my brother had special needs was really hard, and sharing with people that our family was going out of business was really hard.
But you know what made all these things so much easier; using my own experiences to help others.
Throughout the year, as I traveled, people would always ask me, “What is the hardest part of being a national of-
ficer?” I admit, I would hide what was hard for me, because I was afraid of what people would think. The honest answer? The hardest part for me was having confidence that I could do my job as a national officer; that I could make you all proud to have me represent you; that I was influential and inspiring.
Now, I am not just telling you this so you can feel sorry for me and tell me that I did a great job. No, it’s to let you know that the more I opened up about my insecurities and challenges, the more and more people I found going through similar things. And they would open up to me about their own insecurities and problems and I was able to help them and we were able to help each other.
It is time for all of us to start helping by making life a little easier for each other, and we can start by helping them feel comfortable with them-
selves. Author George Eliot, said, “What do we live for if it is not to make life less difficult for each other?”
This year I wanted to have the biggest impact on you I could by making you all feel comfortable with yourselves, by making you feel great about the person you are. But the only way I could do that was by being open with you about who I was.
All of us know that person or a couple of people we can help through our own experiences. Maybe it is a first-year FFA member that messed up the creed in front of the class, maybe it is a friend that just had the girl of his dreams turn him down, someone who didn’t win that award they were striving for or maybe it is a friend who is facing a tough personal challenge at home.
Whatever it is, there are people who need you. Open up, show them who you are, share yourself.
October 26th, 2006
Today was a great day. Early this morning I was able to see my whole family and have breakfast at the top of Conseco Fieldhouse. And this afternoon, I gave my retiring address. It felt so good to stand on stage and share my message with so many FFA members. During my speech, I kept wondering…
What if everyone knew how perfect they already are when they are themselves, when they stop hiding, stop putting up that front.
What if they knew how special each one of them is and how much power they have to help others by just being themselves.
I sure hope each one of them embraces who they are and shares that true self. They have so much ability to help others through their experiences.
What if they knew all this? Well now, I hope they do.