I walked through the forest, watching as all the trees engulfed me in their mess of colors. My feet squish into the ground, as if the ground were pulling me in and taking me captive. I was a part of the forest’s scenery now. Just a leaf among many.

The deciduous trees that I saw along the side of the path during the first part of the walk switched to coniferous trees. It was a noticeable change in the scenery of the forest. It was like a halt in a factory production line, leaving the workers standing around confused until one would come to his senses and go figure out what’s wrong. Like a halt in my capability to process what I’m seeing. It made me stop and take a double take.
The deciduous trees were showing off bold yellow, pumpkin orange, and dull green colors. Each one in their own stage of fall. Some were covered with leaves, like a population of people in a teeming city. Others held on dearly to the last few leaves, spending their days resisting the persistent knocking of fall.

The giant conifers towered over the whole forest,  keeping watch like soldiers. These trees were much taller than the trees with leaves and their needles were a dark green. They were bare of needles until the top quarter, where they wore their needles like crowns. The trees hung onto their needles like a mother does a newborn baby. The needles were hanging onto their color whilst the tree hung onto them.

In this world there are two types of people. The first is the person who is accepting, I see this person in my friend Bobby. Just like the leaf bearing trees in fall, Bobby is  willing to change his views and ideas to accept others. One time I was sitting by Bobby at lunch and he saw a kid sitting by himself.  Bobby had the wonderful idea of going to sit by the kid to provide him some company, so Bobby and I went and sat by the kid.  Bobby treats everyone with kindness.  Bobby has qualities that everybody has, but unlike most people, to Bobby those good qualities are all that matter.  We should all strive to be  Bobby. But not everybody does. There are people that are more like my friend Rachel.  Rachel looks on the outside. Rachel loves to judge and gossip about other people, sometimes about people she hasn’t even met. She always comes up to me to try to get me to feed into her words, while she judges people outloud. Rachel only looks at the outside. Rachel is hard for me to describe because how she acts sometimes disgusts me.

While sitting on a tree in the middle of the forest, a feeling of sadness overcame me. How sad is this world that people aren’t all accepting and kind. The world could be a much different place, maybe even an improved place if people would change their attitudes and learn to accept. I used to look at homeless people and automatically think that they were lazy and that it was their fault that they were living on the streets. While on a mission trip in Hollywood, California I got to sit down and just have conversations with the homeless. I found that in most cases it was quite the opposite. For example I met one guy and he was in Hollywood to become an actor, he ended up getting robbed and all his identification and important documents were stolen from him. Without those documents he was unable to get work and this led to his becoming homeless.

As I walked out of the forest though a conclusion came to me. We can’t have good without having bad. I thought of the story in the bible about the good Samaritan, where a total stranger helps someone in need. I would like to read this story and think that I would be the good Samaritan, that I would stop and help someone, no matter who they were, what their beliefs were, or their outside appearance.

But honestly sometimes I question if I would. I question if I would be accepting.

In fact, I know that sometimes I’m not. I know that sometimes my self image is what stops me from including people and making people feel welcome.  I don’t want people to look at me differently  if I include the “outsider”. So sometimes I don’t. For example in the winter I compete in gymnastics. Over the past two years there have been two girls that are seen as outsiders on the team. I try my best to be a good person and include them when I can, but sometimes I fall short. Especially when other girls on the team, that I consider to be close friends with, talk badly about the outsiders. Sometimes I feel the pressure to just agree with what they're saying to make sure I don’t look bad. There has been more than one occasion where I just agreed and I know that’s wrong.

There aren’t two types of people. We have both those people in all of us. It is human nature to judge people. It is in our nature to tear people down, but it is also in our nature to do the exact opposite. Humans can be kind and accepting, and in a world like ours it is up to us to do exactly that. It is up to us to change and learn to accept, like the changing leaves of fall. As I walk out of the forest I am mesmerized by the colorful leaves around me. Almost all of them are about ready to let go of their trees. I shiver as a strong breeze goes right through my jacket and I watch as the breeze takes the ready leaves to the ground.