Sometimes the people who influence your life the most are those who you would least expect them to be.   Mr. Anderson, an Emergency Services teacher for Rosemount high school in Minnesota, played a huge role in my life and countless others. He showed me that even though the world is a chaotic place and is full of turmoil, there is still beauty in the world and you just need focus and embrace those moments. Unfortunately many people do not realize this.
	It was rough time for me, my parents were getting divorced, college was coming up, and I was having some relationship trouble. My life was a complete wreck at this time, I was pushing my friends away and even worse I was pushing the world away. I pushed the world away due to me only seeing the world as a wasteland of hope and happiness, and not seeing any of the plants growing in the vast emptiness.
	After my self-exclusion from the outside world, someone finally broke my solitude, it was Mr. Anderson. One day in his EMS class he pulled me aside from a triage scenario and asked me what was wrong. I told him that my life was an empty void that I could not find filler for; he returned my plea for help with a simple yet powerful saying. His statement was, “JP, the world is full of disappointment and misery, the only way anyone can survive in this god-forsaken world is to embrace the positives and shove the negatives down.”
	Those words have stuck with me through almost every aspect of my life.