Being a Teenager Today

“400 trillion to 1, that’s how rare it is to be a human being” according to Gary Vaynerchuk. I am in a constant state of forgetting I have a future because life still feels like it should be 2016. Being a teenager today is overwhelmingly hard because we are so mean, I am so mean. We are mean to our selves, to our friends and just plain mean to strangers. We have made jokes and labeled it as “okay” for years because we are extremely desensitized, while also being the most empathic because of what we have endured all these years.

 We have been force-fed content since we were 3, online, in movies and on TV; it is diversely conflicting. We are told to “relax,” but also work hard, “enjoy the best years of our lives,” but these are the year’s that decide our entire future. We are told things like “don’t half a** it,” but “don’t take it too seriously,” “have no regrets,” but overthink, over analyze, and over prepare for everything.

 Being a teenager today is not fair. No, it is not comparably worse than a teenager’s during the black plague or the Industrial Revolution. However, it is impossible to view our world positively due to the way it is today. But despite that I know we were made to do the impossible.

 We have wars, poverty, shootings, deforestation, climate change, and the colossal weight that individually we cannot do anything about these topics besides worry. We acknowledge that these things exist, and we go to school everyday, we work everyday, we have the strength to live everyday. That is nothing short of amazing, I believe what we do everyday is truly remarkable. We build community and try everyday. It might not be our best. We may barley try, and still, even the least amount of effort is something, THAT is incredible.

The fact that we can block out the relentless noise of the world is extraordinary. We wake up and do something incredible daily, we live despite being aware of the horrendous events that happen everyday. It is something we take for granted, something that we need congratulate ourselves on more often because the fact that we do this, and have the ability to, is something to be proud of. I am so proud of us.

We are resilience, we are strength, and we accomplish the unaccomplishable while being exhausted. That is what it takes and what it means to be a teenager today, to consistently try in a world drenched in chaos.