Letter to the World
Letter to the World
Dear World,
I am teenager. I am on the cusp of life, a time when my entire life is ahead of me yet I am beginning to feel as if some parts of it are behind me.
Now more than ever I am fielding questions about my future. Where will I go once I leave high school? What will I do for a living. Now more than ever my answers to those questions seem more like they came from a politician to a journalist than a student taught to always use evidence and analysis to prove a claim.
I am at a time where I am told that I am still a kid. My adulthood is not valued like that of others. I'm not a grown up, and I am not treated as such, but I am expected to act as one.
My protests to such unfair treatment are shunned away. "Life's unfair, kid, deal with it."
The simple naïvety of that statement angers me. The statement itself isn't untrue — it's the suggested fix for that reality which it confirms as true that does. "Deal with it" worked in the 1930s when millions of Americans faced unemployment because of an economic disaster the United States hasn't seen since. I cannot be expected to "deal" with life like they did.
With all potential avenues for my life, there is a large chance that I will not end up leading a successful life. Generations prior to mine have screwed up the system so badly that for me to make a comfortable living with or without a college degree will be nearly impossible. And now it's up to me to "deal with it"? Hogwash!
If the success of your children are so important to you, then why is it that all of life's issues must rest on the shoulders of the children who will find it hard to simply get by under this system you have created?
For all my life I have attacked the challenges that face me with a sort of unwavering optimism. I do not intend on changing that tradition. But moving into adulthood is something that seems almost unwinnable for a teenager like me. No matter what I do I will fail. Prices are so expensive that owning a home in my future is as much a dream as any young child's ambition to become an astronaut, a firefighter, a police officer. . .
So I guess, world, I have you to thank for this. Please, continue to lay the problem of climate change, homelessness, and the affordability crisis on my generation's shoulders. You created the problem, so why should you fix it? Besides, we're already doomed to fail anyway, so we might as well make our failure count and make it a big one at that.
Yours truly,
Every single teenager who does not come from a well-off family
The Voice
January 2025
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