Transcendental. That is the only way to describe the video. It is 10 years late, I know. But it still counts. It is unbelievable how a 13 year old can say so openly what we ignore, what we don’t want to see every day.

Now, when we are young, we wait eagerly to grow independent. We seek fulfilment, we embrace adventure and we demand liberty. Yet we do not realize, or at least in my case, the amount of responsibility we have in our hands. We are being handed over a planet to care for so that future generations have a stable and healthy environment in which to live – that being utopic, of course. It is pointless to expect adults to hand us a perfectly resolved world, but we also don’t have to give up just because we are overwhelmed by the task in front of us. We do know that problems are in our future; we just imagine them far away. Well, we sometimes need these 13 year olds to remind us we must act now.

I’m only 5 years older than her yet I feel this girl has considered more closely the consequences of our actions – or lack of thereof – than a lot of people our age, myself included. Are we so wrapped around our own problems that we don’t see the bigger picture? We talk about how our clothes aren’t cool enough, how our phones need replacing, how our computers are so outdated. Ramble about our annoying parents, our boy problems, our own insecurities, our own desires, but we miss the crucial sense in life. This sense is different in each person – each one of us has a different perspective on what’s worth living for. But we all live to fulfil something bigger than ourselves – whether is to bring world peace or bringing peace to another person right next to us. At least that’s what I believe in.

What scares me the most is how easy we ignore the problems we should be participating in solving. Whether the problem is the impact of the enhanced greenhouse effect, or the Syrian Crisis happening as I write, I feel, at least in my community, that these current events take a lower priority in our interests. Yes, we see it in the news, we hear endless debates whether or not other countries should intervene, but I feel like we don’t really pay attention to it – just hope the adults resolve the issue quickly.

If we expect to be given independence and freedom of making our own choices, we have to give back all we’ve got. We demand to be heard – well then, it’s time that we open our mouths and say something useful. I’m not saying we should take life too seriously and consequently be stripped away from our youth when we have all of our lives ahead of us that will sure come with conflicts to resolve – after all, we are still ignorant of some of adulthood’s strains. But what we should do is to be aware of what others are experiencing in the world. The moment we forget the world doesn’t revolve around us, all hope of a better world will fade away. The more solidarity we show, the more harmony the planet will have.

We are young, probably with more opportunities than our parents had to thrive and make a change, now being more interconnected and everything, so let’s make something out of it. We expect adults to work hard and we demand fast answers like the cure for diseases or resolutions to conflicts, but we have to start thinking that it is never too early to take action too.