English Insight Journal #7

“If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility”
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I have found the above quote to be unquestionably true in my experience. Many times the people around us act out because there is something deeper prompting the action.

A few months ago, there was a co-worker in my life that was very challenging to get along with. He was a great guy, but he liked picking on people and took it too far sometimes. I struggled with knowing how to deal with him. I would come home from work some days and be at my wits end as to why he acted like he did.

Then one day, he was in a more serious mood, and he told me the backstory to his life. Without going into too much detail, the kid had a terrible time of it when he was little. He was adopted when he was a young teen, and life started looking up, but he was still severely emotionally damaged from his childhood. As an older teen, my co-worker went through some pretty dark and difficult times and he said that God has undeniably saved his life on multiple occasions.

After getting to understand more of where he was coming from and how he processes things emotionally, it allowed me to see his actions through a different lens and be more forgiving. It opened my eyes to how easily I judge/dismiss people without taking the time to know them and their story. God calls us to love our enemies so I challenge you to analyze “enemy” relationships in your life and try to get a better picture of where the individual is coming from and what you can do to serve them like Jesus would.

The Great American Story

America is a wonderful nation. The founding fathers had strong convictions about liberty, so our country was founded on the ideals of freedom. “What about slavery?” you may ask. As we look back into the beginnings of our nation, we shudder at the horror of slavery. Some of the founding fathers owned slaves, and while many of them realized that it was a morally wrong practice, they still kept slaves. Others worked tirelessly to rid their beloved America of this oppression.

William Lloyd Garrison, a famed abolitionist, believed that the constitution was an inherently evil document since it didn’t abolish slavery. He went to the extent of burning a copy in public to prove his point. In the 1830’s the anti-slavery movement started taking off. People like Garrison, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Frederick Douglass (to name a few) were incredibly influential in abolishing the evil practice.

Due to the economical impact slaves had on the south, slaveowners didn’t want to give up their “property” without a fight. If someone doesn’t recognize that what they’re doing is wrong, they see no reason to change. The beginning of the anti-slavery movement was a campaign to change the minds and beliefs of pro-slavery people.

Tensions between the Northern states and the Southern states grew, and once the first shots were fired at Fort Sumter, war was imminent. President Abraham Lincoln used abolition as a cause to gain the support he needed from loyal Americans. He figured that if they were fighting to abolish something they saw as evil, more support would voluntarily be given by the people. By the time the Union won the war in May of 1865, slavery was illegal in America.

Picking up the pieces of a nation-wide war is never easy. The South’s mostly agriculture economy collapsed when slavery was abolished. The plantation owners no longer could work as much land as they used to, so they had to figure out a new way of life. Government officials were also trying to figure out how to re-incorporate the confederate states. Would they be accepted as conquered countries or returning states? Lincoln believed that the way the states seceded was illegal (and therefore invalid), so he was in favor of letting bygones be bygones and letting them back into the union without further bloodshed and turmoil.

Between the end of the Civil war (1965) and the year 1900, America underwent major industrialization. The railroads helped businessmen expand their empires and turn the US into the #1 industrial power in the world. Some of the largest commodities were oil, petroleum, and steel.

The Progressive Movement stated in 1901 when William McKinley was assassinated and Teddy Roosevelt ascended to power as the president of the United States of America at the age of 42. Roosevelt was the kind of man who attacked everything in life with a mighty vigor. He went into politics, became vice president, and then president. He brought back a lot of power to the office of the president. He had what is called a “Stewardship View” of the presidency. He believed that he could do whatever he wanted, as long as he thought it was in the public interest; often bending or disregarding the constitution in the process.

This was the over-arching view during the progressive era. Many powerful politicians vastly expanded the government’s reach of power. They thought that the constitution should be a fluid, changeable document, or at least that America shouldn’t be held to such a firm standard/set of limits.

When WW1 struck in 1914, the US was able to stay out of it for around 3 years, but when German forces kept sinking American merchant ships, President Woodrow Wilson made the decision to join the Allied forces in an attempt to win the war that would “end all wars”. Many Americans felt betrayed by their president. This sentiment stemmed from annoyance that since Wilson had won his re-election campaign on the slogan “He kept us out of the War” they believed he wouldn’t bring America into the conflict no matter what. After less than a year of fighting, U.S. soldiers got to come home. The war ended in November of 1918. 11 years later, America’s financial institutions collapsed. The great depression was a terrible time of desperation in our history.

The New Deal. It was Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s attempt to pull the United States out of the Great Depression. He created a wave of programs, designed to supply work for unemployed Americans. He also used this deal to enact various financial reforms and regulations. His motives seemed to be genuine, but the New Deal just didn’t do its job. Roosevelt believed that the government could manufacture higher wages that would in turn stimulate the economy, but when put into action with the National Industrial Recovery Act, the president was proven wrong.

Pulling America out of the great depression was really the accomplishment of WWII. Whenever a country is at war, an economic boom usually follows due to the need for so much manufacturing. More jobs equal less unemployment, higher wages, and a better standard of living. The US entered WWII in 1941 when the Japanese bombed our naval base in Pearl Harbor.

Ending in September of 1945, World War 2 ravaged much of the earth. Unlike most wars in previous history, WWII was blatantly an ideological war. Western civilization/values were pitted against the totalitarian ideals of Germany, Japan, and Italy. Following the ally’s victory, the Soviet Union became a huge problem, plunging America into the Cold War. Communism goes directly against everything America stands for, so until the Soviet state fell in 1991, Americans worked hard against the regime.

Many Americans have forgot how bad Socialism is. It’s the woke new “in” form of government. College students are taught that Capitalism is evil, Socialism is good, and rich people are the curse of the planet. We need to remember our history to prevent our country from following in the footsteps of those before us. Socialism and Communism will never work.

America is in a very unique era. We have become so free that people have started taking for granted the great gift our founding fathers bestowed on us. Liberty and democracy are no longer valued and upheld as common core-values of the American people. I would challenge you to know the constitution and stand up for freedom in our country.

Samuel Clemens

Samuel Langhorn Clemens, author of “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” as well as many other classic works led an intriguing life of adventure, discovery, joy, and creativity. Publishing under the pen name of Mark Twain, this brilliant man was an incredible writer, humorist, entrepreneur, and lecturer. His works embodied a vast range of emotion and experience, extracted from his extensive imagination as well as from actual life experiences. 

Young Sam Clemens was born in November of 1835 in the town of Florida, Missouri. John and Jane Clemens brought 7 children into the world, but other than Sam, only three of them grew past childhood. Orion was the oldest of the Clemens children. He would go on to become a journalist, small-time political figure in the Nevada territory, and father to a young girl named Jenny. Jenny, however, passed away at the young age of 9 and this tremendous loss stunted Orion’s political career. Sam’s little brother, Henry, followed in his footsteps, getting a position on a steamboat and working the river. He died tragically at the age of 20 from injuries he sustained in an explosion on the PENNSYLVANIA. Sam’s little sister Pamela grew to be an adult, married William Moffett, and had two children with him.

Growing up, the Clemens children lived in Hannibal, Missouri. Sam loved traipsing around town with his buddies, searching for the next adventure, and getting into all sorts of mischief in the process. This period in his life modeled many of the stories for his future writing of the Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. 

Sam’s father, John Clemens was a judge/attorney in Hannibal, but he died in 1847. This caused Sam to drop out of school the next year, and at the age of 12, he became a printer’s apprentice. 3 years later, he was hired as a typesetter at Orion’s newspaper office; the Hannibal Journal. While Sam learned many invaluable skills while working for his brother, at the age of 18, he was ready to move on to something bigger and better. He got a job in New York working as a printer, but this wasn’t his passion. 

Ever since he was a boy, Sam wanted to be the grandiose pilot of a steamboat. The pilot’s job was to know every inch of the river; every snag, every eddy, every sandbar. The pilot mustn’t ever make a bad judgement, or the entire steamboat could be lost to the river or beached on a sandbar.The thought of this greatly allured the young man with an adventurous spirit. He convinced a steamboat pilot by the name of Horace Bixby to take him on as a “Cub Pilot”; an apprentice of the river and the art of piloting.

Sam “graduated” and finally got the dream job he had always wanted. He was even able to get his little brother Henry a job on the PENNSYLVANIA; another steamboat on the Mississippi. When the boiler exploded, killing Henry, big brother Sam held himself responsible for the young man’s death. It weighed heavily on his conscience even into his old age. Sam kept piloting on the Mississippi until the Civil War broke out in 1861. He then joined a small confederate regiment, but it disbanded only 2 weeks after he joined.  

After his short episode in the army, Sam joined his older brother in the Nevada Territory. Orion had received a job as the secretary for the Governor, and invited Sam to come and live in the West with him. The two of them traveled across the United States together, witnessing many unique happenings and meeting many interesting characters. Once they arrived in Virginia City, Orion set to work on his secretary job. Sam, however, had different ideas. He decided to join the throngs of men mining for silver in the Comstock rush. Unfortunately, success didn’t reward his efforts. The attempt to strike it rich failed, so Sam started writing for the local newspaper; the Territorial Enterprise. The publisher, Joseph Goodman, paid him $25 per week for writing his stories. An article in Time captures the essence of Sam’s writing perfectly: “The budding but unpolished genius quickly demonstrated a unique ability to use embellishment, hyperbole, satire, caricature, parody, mock-flattery, and ridicule to flay bare essential truth. As his voice matured, Clemens’s stories, hoaxes, and brutal sketches grew into something entirely American, encapsulating the terrible whimsy, painful irony, and outrageous hilarity of life on the mining frontier.”

Sam’s work was close to home. People found it relatable but funny. At the age of 28, the young man first used his well-known pen name; Mark Twain. Mark twain was an exclamation among the men on a steamboat. They would holler it out when the vessel reached the point where the water was 2 fathoms deep. Now, there is some controversy over how he got this name. He claimed that one of the steamboat captains bestowed the nickname upon him, but there are legends about how he would saunter into one of the well-known bars in Virginia City and whoop out “mark twain!” to the barkeeper. As the tale goes, that would be the que for the saloon worker to serve up 2 shots of whiskey and add two tally marks to Sam’s account

During the next period of his life, Clemens traveled the world and wrote about his experiences. While exploring Europe and the Middle East, Sam befriended a man named Charles Langdon. They traveled together and during their trip, Charles showed him a picture of his sister; Olivia Langdon. Sam claimed that he fell in love with her from the first time he saw that picture. The Langdons were a wealthy New York Family in the coal business. Olivia and Sam met in 1867. They went to a Charles Dickens reading on their first official date. Many letters sent between the two of them composed the majority of their courtship.  Sam knew that Olivia was the woman of his dreams. He knew that he was going to marry her, but she wasn’t as sure that she was going to marry him. When he proposed in September of 1868, she declined but had a change of heart 2 months later. They were engaged for a little over a year before their wedding in February of 1870. 

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn are two of Clemens’ most loved works of writing. He modeled the characters in the books after people in real life that he knew as a boy. His years of roaming around Hannibal, Missouri as a child payed off and gave him a very unique insight into not only how young boys interact and think, but how they amuse themselves with imagination and the great outdoors.  Mr. Clemens garnered much approval and validation following the completion of the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. As it was somewhat of a sequel to Tom Sawyer, the books should be read as a pair.

 Huckleberry Finn was much more distinctive than Tom Sawyer. The book follows Huck’s quest to free Jim; the slave of Miss Watson. The teenaged boy has many moral struggles along the way. He goes through the process of attempting to reconcile the fact that he became a criminal when he started helping Jim escape, and the fact that Jim, a good but mistreated man shouldn’t have been a slave in the first place. Many people have “canceled” this classic because they claim it has offensive content.

The useless controversy over this book is insane.  It is set in pre-Civil War America, and since Clemens uses the word “nigger” people claim that it is a racist book with no place in our society. I would argue that this assertion is based on feelings rather than facts. Sam Clemens was not a racist. In fact, he was outspokenly for the abolition of slavery in America. An article in the First Amendment Encyclopedia states that “Twain supporters contend that the author was anything but racist and insist that the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was a satire in which Twain sought to highlight the hypocrisy of the society in which he grew up. Defenders of the book also insist that Jim comes across as having more common sense and as being more talented than either Huck or his best friend, Tom Sawyer.”

Some libraries went so far as to ban the book following its publication, yet through it all, the Adventures of Huck Finn went on to become required reading in some schools. I remember reading it a few years ago and thoroughly enjoying the vivacious characters, lively descriptions, and thrilling adventures encapsulated in the story.

 In his later years, Clemens worked with former U.S. President and civil war general Ulyses S. Grant to write a biography. It followed the life of General Grant from start to finish, relaying interesting stories from antebellum life as well as from his life after the war. He then worked on a number of classics such as “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court” and “Pudd’nhead Wilson”. In the mid 1890’s Sam Clemens was struggling under a large financial strain. He wrote nearly around the clock to try and make enough money to recover, but in the long run, he failed and had to file for bankruptcy in 1894. After going bankrupt, Clemens delegated all money management to his friend and financier Henry Rogers. Under Roger’s care, debts were paid and the Clemens family financially rebounded.  Throughout the rest of his life, Sam kept himself busy with speaking engagements and writing.

Between the years of 1896 and 1909, Sam lost two of his daughters as well as his beloved wife Olivia. Their deaths shattered him, and he fell deeply depressed. He was a man of great mental capacity, but when the people he loved most passed away, he was a broken man.  He died on April 21, 1910. The beloved father, renown author, and prestigious speaker was buried in Elmira, New york, in the Langdon family plot at Woodlawn Cemetery.

Over the 74 years he was alive, Samuel Langhorn Clemens enriched the world with his ideas. He wrote because he was passionate about people. He spoke to bring people laughter and to educate them. He traveled to gain experiences that he could share with those who could not experience them themselves. He left us with great works of fiction, extensive biographies, and gripping historical accounts of adventure. His wit and humor are comparable to that of great humorists of history such as Benjamin Franklin. Clemens persevered through many hardships in life, and while he wasn’t perfect, he walked through the fire with grace and dignity. I appreciate the fact that he wasn’t worried about being politically correct and always aligning his views with what popular opinion was at the time. He wrote what he wanted, believed what he wanted, and wasn’t scared to share his views with the world.

Bibliography
Crouch, Gregory. “Mark Twain’s Real Name: How Samuel Clemens Picked a Pen Name.” Time, Time, 19 June 2018, time.com/5313628/mark-twain-real-name/.
This article covers how Twain acquired his pen name as well as clearing up a bit of the confusion surrounding its origin. 

Proudfit, Isabel, and W. C. Nims. River-Boy: the Story of Mark Twain. Messner, 1967.
This book follows Sam Clemens through his life

“Mark Twain.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 19 Jan. 2021, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Twain.
Comprehensive list of facts about Mark Twain

“Orion Clemens.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 2 Feb. 2021, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_Clemens.
About Orion Clemens’ life

“Sam Clemens and His Brother Henry Clemens.” Banner, http://www.twainquotes.com/Steamboats/HenryClemens.html.
About Henry Clemens

“Mark Twain Project :: Pamela Moffett.” Mark Twain Project :: Biographies :: Moffett, Pamela A., http://www.marktwainproject.org/biographies/bio_moffett_pamela.html.
Summary of Pamela Clemens Moffett’s life.

SparkNotes, SparkNotes, http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/huckfinn/plot-analysis/. Purdy, Elizabeth R. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The First Amendment Encyclopedia , http://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/789/adventures-of-huckleberry-finn#:~:text=Huckleberry%20Finn%20banned%20immediately%20after%20publication&text=Immediately%20after%20publication%2C%20the%20book,obsolete%2C%20inaccurate%2C%20and%20mindless.

Getting Past Mental Walls

Do you have things in your life that you want to get past or conquer? What is it that keeps you from doing so? Is there something that you want to get good at but are too nervous to try? We humans create walls in our mental world that hold a lot of power over how we perform and what we experience. These mental roadblocks have a way of making us ok with having a mentality of apathy towards the challenging tasks in our lives. An interesting side effect that mental blocks create when not dealt with is an overall sense of defeat; with life, with relationships, with exercise. You name it. When there’s an aspect in your life where you allow yourself to feel defeated and powerless, it inevitably transfers into other more important areas.

The latest mental roadblock I’ve been working on is running. My body is completely capable of it, yet for years I’ve made excuses because I was slow, got sick, it was boring, it was hard, etc, etc. I realized recently that the fear of failing has held me back. When I was 12, I got a really bad sickness that messed up my lungs, so ever since then, running has been something I’ve avoided like the plague. Even after I recovered completely. Because I didn’t run for so long, I’m currently not very good at it and I hate looking like a wimp when I can’t keep up with my friends or feel sick.

The best way to conquer a mental challenge is to hit it hard and fast. To deal with my running, I signed up and started training for a spartan race that is taking place in May. That was 3 weeks ago. Since then, I’ve gone running 6 times and have experienced multiple small wins that motivate me to keep working at it even when it’s painful, miserable, and difficult. This morning, I woke up at 5 and ran around a mountain in the snow with my brother and some of our friends. It was mentally and physically challenging, but the feeling of victory I experienced afterward was worth the pain.

I challenge you to think about an area in your life where you’ve created a mental wall that holds you back from bettering yourself. What can you do today to start climbing over the wall? It isn’t an overnight process, but consistency, determination, and courage will bring you victory in the end!

Impact of Social Media

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1/18/2021

Although I am fairly new to the social media scene, there are both pros and cons that I’ve observed.  Social media, when used in the right context, is an incredible tool for business. Thousands of people can be reached with the click of a button instead of having a face-to-face conversation with each individual. It can also be used to keep in contact with long-distance family and friends. Social media is a powerful way to further a political or ideological cause, good or bad. Some of the drawbacks are cyberbullying, misinformation, and the growing addiction that today’s youth has for technology. Not to make this a political discussion, but another one of the issues I’ve witnessed with most social media platforms lately is the censorship. Facebook and Twitter both banned the US President as well as other conservative politicians following the Capitol Hill riots. While I may not agree with everything somebody says, I believe that they should be able to say what they want to, as long as it doesn’t directly incite violence (e.g. “go burn so and so’s house down”). 

During the age of Covid, many people have made a big difference by raising money for others who are in need. A man named Caspar Lee started the Princes Trust campaign to monetarily assist 1,000 young people through the crisis. He used the social media hashtag #LookingForward to get celebrity support and raise the funds necessary to reach his goal. Each person who participated posted either a video or picture telling what they were most looking forward to after Covid was over. 

The recent story of a negative outcome of social media involves a 12-year-old little girl who was contacted through Facebook by her future sex-trafficker. He messaged her for 6 months, convinced her to meet up with him, and proceeded to kidnap her and sell her body.  She was later able to escape and share her story. This is a tragic example of how social media can be used in young kids’ lives when they’re feeling vulnerable and insecure. They take their problems to their online “friends”, presenting a very exposed and unprotected version of themselves. While most of the time nothing bad happens, sometimes traffickers take that opportunity to prey on innocent little kids.

The Good

What is the Good?
An abstract existence that everyone wants,
Yet observing the world,
It seems that Good is lost.

What is Beauty?
More than something aesthetically pleasing,
Beauty is the Good; pure and unceasing.

Athens vs. Sparta

The Peloponnesian war was a bloody conflict between the two most well known Greek city-states; Athens and Sparta. It lasted for 27 years, concluding with Sparta immerging as the victor.

One of the reasons this war took such a long time was that Athens was a great naval power, while Sparta was mighty a land power. Pitched battles were therefore rather difficult. A hefty navy can’t single-handedly defeat an incredibly strong land army, while at the same time, an incredibly strong land army can’t easily defeat a hefty navy without having marine allies.

Sparta gathered allies to help them defeat the great navy of Athens, and eventually succeeded. But it took a while. The leaders of Athens didn’t know when to stop, so they kept pushing; fighting on when they could have just made peace and moved on with their lives. Many men died on both sides. The end of the Peloponnesian war marked the end of the Golden Age of Greece.

Insights Journal #1

Recently, I have been learning not to care what people think about me, my political opinions, and my moral convictions. It has been quite interesting to see how my boldness in talking about potentially divisive subjects (especially with my co-workers) has gone up. I’ve stopped constantly thinking about what they’re thinking about me. It’s exhausting to go through that all the time. I was also trying to put on a good front and attempting to only show the side of myself that I wanted them to see. As I said, it’s exhausting.

Well, here’s the question: Why shouldn’t you care what people think about you? My (very Odessa-ish) answer is this: If you know who you are and what you believe, you shouldn’t be ashamed of it. Therefore, you shouldn’t care what other people think about you and what your ideals are. It’s not like you’re going to change your whole self to align with somebody else’s thoughts about you. I know it’s easy to do or at least put on a show of doing it, but it isn’t worth it. The real you will eventually come out, so you might as well be truthful to start with.

Also, you should be proud of who you are as a person. If you’re embarrassed about who you are or what your convictions are, maybe you need to do some serious thinking, studying, and transforming. I believe that it is incredibly important to be confident in WHO we are as people. Knowing what the truth is and what we believe is crucial to being functioning members of society. Once we know what the truth is (not my truth or your truth), we need to be ready to stand up for it and take a stand for what is right. Be passionate about your beliefs, but be open to other people’s convictions as well. If you’re open with them, they’ll be a whole lot more likely to be open with you.

Anyways, this is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. Sometimes I’m too confident and come off as an arrogant jerk, so I’m learning to balance confidence and empathy.

Share your thoughts on this subject in the comments box!

Athens, Sparta, and the Persian Wars.

When the Persian army invaded Greece in 492 BC, the city states in the area determined that to have a chance at succeeding against such a superior force, they would have to band together. Deciding they needed a leader, Sparta was selected for the task.

Due to the city’s supreme military power, training, and lifestyle, the other city states chose to follow the Spartans into battle. Remember, the whole fiber of Spartan society was built around the combatant warrior persona that we remember to this day.

When the Persian King Darius invaded, the opposing forces met in battle a few times. Both sides had victories and losses, but the Greeks finally defeated the Persians at Marathon. King Darius wasn’t about to be made a fool of by such an inferior force, so he began putting another army together in order to return and completely conquer Greece. Before he could carry his plans out, however, King Darius died, and his son Xerxes took the throne. Leading the second invasion of Greece, he was determined to completely vanquish the Greek resistance.

While Sparta supplied an elite army on land for the defense, Athens provided a state-of-the-art naval force. After the first invasion, one of the Athenian kings had convinced the people to build a fleet of ships. The city had recently mined a couple tons of silver, and while the majority of the people wanted to redistribute the money among themselves, the wise king foresaw that the Persians would come back and succeeded in convincing the people to put the money towards building a navy instead.

During the current period in history, roughly 2/5ths of the earth’s population was ruled by the Persians. Over 1/2 of the world’s resources were under Persian control, so this Greek victory was a big deal.

When the Persians attacked, the greatly outnumbered Grecians had to rely on each other to succeed. They recognized each-other’s strengths, and used them for their united advantage. When the Persian forces left for good, the allies started having serious conflicts. The citizens of each city were so different, they couldn’t agree enough to unite under one leader or government. This eventually led to brutal war between the city-states. Sparta prevailed, coming out the victors, but after almost 50 years of fighting, thousands of people had died. War isn’t good for anyone in the end.

U.S. Constitution

Why do we have a Constitution? Why are there 3 different branches of Government? Well, the constitution has kept our beautiful country the most free in the world for 244 years (and counting). The checks and balances that were put in place through the constitution have saved America from crumbling into tyrannical rule. Each of the three branches (Legislative, Judicial, and Executive) has a very specific job to do. Dividing the power to these separate bodies keeps everyone’s power in check.

Our Constitution, since it isn’t a living document, has helped keep these limitations in place, not allowing legislators or senators to easily change it according to their latest whim or idea. Many people believe that the constitution is an outdated list of rules written by a bunch of dumb, old, white guys, and that it should be re-written or severely edited. They say that it suppresses women and minorities. I hate to break it to you, but it doesn’t.

Yes, we’ve had our share of problems as a country. Ranging from slavery, to political corruption, America isn’t perfect. But through it all, the constitution (and its checks and balances) has kept our country from being taken over by tyrants.

What are y’alls thoughts about this topic? I love having discussions with people from both sides of the aisle, so feel free to comment and share what you believe!