The BTS Effect (Contest Finalist)
written by Eden Smith
When I read the prompt for this essay, my first ideas were to write about BTS’s hard work, resilience, and friendship. While writing the first draft, though, I couldn’t navigate through a fog in my brain: I’m writing about BTS for a BTS website whose audience is made up of mostly ARMY. These three aspects of the boys get praised all the time within the fandom. I felt like every point I brought up, everyone would already know. Nothing was new, nothing stood out. But those tools are the most important gifts BTS has given me, and it would be wrong to lie or make something up. So, now I’m writing this second version of my essay, and I’m realizing I’m going to have to blaze my own trail, conquer this rough terrain, and scale this mountain the same way BTS scaled theirs. It’s an uphill battle for this Fargo, North Dakota high school student, raised in a valley, but that’s similar to how it’s been for BTS their entire career. They’ve been carving their own name into the blank hillside.
I’m struggling to map out my writing and manage time for this with all the homework for my classes and sports practices, too. I’m stuck. It kind of feels like I’m a rock at the bottom of a stream and I can’t see the crest. And, then, I look to my motivation: BTS. BTS had a sheer rock face to climb to get where they are now. They worked incredibly hard day after day, constantly climbing past the point where most people would decide they were high enough. BTS has never settled for the foothills. Despite all this, though, the chance of them reaching the summit was slim. BTS was broke with no climbing equipment, with only their hopes and dreams lifting them while marching up the Mt. Everest of rich companies and harsh media. It’s not the same — my mountain — but it’s what I see. I need to make a lot of revisions by retracing my steps in order to reach higher heights. Good enough won’t be good enough. BTS taught me hard work pays off. So, I will do what it takes to scale this. I will add my height to the diameter of the Earth.
I hope to someday be as strong as BTS is when something tries to keep me at the tree line. I want to get back up, stay focused, and fight to reach the top of that snow-capped mountain range like they have. It’s hard for me not to get discouraged when things don’t go my way. I work so hard for something and I am confident it will work out, but then, it doesn’t. It stings. Power and momentum are what get us up mountains, yet, sometimes, we don’t have enough of either. My grappling hooks might fail but, in order to get where I want to go, I must get back up and climb again. Whether it’s rewriting essays, redoing assignments, or racing again after a previous bad race, I can’t let poor results and disappointment get me down. I have to get up and retry, and I aspire to do so with the same grace as BTS. For example, BTS should have won at the most recent Grammy Awards — everyone knows that. Instead of letting this slip bring them down, they kept their heads held high and are using it as motivation to “run harder this year” as Yoongi said on Weverse. BTS doesn’t view avalanches as failures, and they wouldn’t want ARMY to either. Whether it is their Grammys or other mountains in our lives, they want us to push upward. If the ’94 line getting desperate enough to post thirst traps in order to distract us isn’t enough proof that they don’t like when we are upset, I don’t know what is. They’ve shown us why something not going our way doesn’t equal failure, so we shouldn’t let it keep us from strapping on our hiking boots and climbing again. I struggle with it now as I write this, but BTS gives me motivation to use negative results as a reason to continue to work hard. Flying, running, walking, or crawling, I know I can get up the hill somehow.
Even though each of us can climb on our own, we won’t fall as far when we are tethered together. We can save ourselves from plummeting downward by working together and helping each other back up. I used to think I always worked better alone, but, when I saw how well BTS supported each other when they were stressed or overwhelmed, I realized I wanted support too. I wanted to not breathe the thin air on my own, even if it’s just for a single climb. I started running varsity track and cross country in middle school, then all my teammates graduated when I still had many years left. I thought I’d be stuck running alone while trying to be a leader, and I was for a little while. I was drained. I was slower. I wasn’t enjoying it. The mountain range was looking more and more jagged, less and less majestic. I kept trying harder in practice and was climbing higher there, but with every race, I’d slip back down. Eventually, I got tired of the struggle and decided to put my energy toward enjoying the sport again. It required putting more effort into having fun with my teammates inside and outside of practice. As I did this, I became happier. Slowly, my races started to improve. The thinning air wasn’t as lonely when I had my teammates by my side. I thought that, as the leader, I shouldn’t share my burdens with them, and I should always be the one to pull them back up. BTS helps Namjoon so much when he gets overwhelmed, so I learned that being a vulnerable leader isn’t a bad thing. I learned from them that in order to work well together, we must be vulnerable as we face the climb. Then, we can all be better than we were before. Sometimes a climber falls, but the rope that ties them and their teammates together saves them from plummeting down. Teammates work together to pull each climber back up to where they were before. From there, they gather themselves and continue upwards. I fall down sometimes, however, my teammates pull me to safety. We climb higher. We rise like the rise of Bangtan.
BTS has done so much worthy of admiration. With their Love Yourself series and the inspirational messages in their songs, they send flare after flare into the sky to guide us on our way. Their footprints of work ethic, resilience, and friendship tell compelling stories. They’ve taught me how to work hard and not give up while also showing me the benefits of being a part of a team. With these lessons, getting to the crest becomes much easier and much less daunting. Hill or mountain, it can be conquered. The challenge presented by this essay is not equivalent to the stones thrown at BTS while they were scaling their mountain, but their story is my guide for tackling this. The boys have mentioned times when they questioned why they were climbing and if they were able to keep on climbing. So, when I ask myself, Why am I doing this? Why am I choosing to write this? or, Why do I care what others think about my writing? I remember my writing just needs to show how much I care about the boys, their message, and what they’ve taught me to get to the mountain top. This is how we stand at the peak of our hills and mountains, how we bask in the sunshine, how we stand on our stages high above with flower petals raining down. BTS raises us; we raise BTS.
This essay was chosen as one of the finalists of the first BTS Essay contest hosted by The BTS Effect. Find out more here.
The BTS Effect Medium page publishes submissions from ARMY about how BTS has affected, inspired, or otherwise impacted their lives. If you’d like to submit a story, please click here for more information. This publication is part of TheBTSEffect.com. You can sign up for the newsletter here.
