We are exhausted. Exhausted of playing the parts presented to us: daughters, son, female, male. We want to pick our own roles. We want to be politicians, teachers, generals, journalists, photographers. However, regardless of what we try to do, we are seen as co-dependent, self-absorbed, and foolish. Those stereotypes have been held in place from the beginning of our generation, garnering us the nicknames iGeneration, Digital Natives, and Gen Tech. Even with the fun made at our expense, this generation has witnessed more death and decay in the past two decades than any other. We can no longer perch on the edges of our seats to see what abhorrent disaster awaits us. For years, people have waited to see if the much-needed change in our world will come on its own, but no genuine thing comes without work. Issues that were not recognized before are coming to light now, but yet some people still refuse to acknowledge them. Climate change was not officially declared a national emergency until June 2019, and gun violence is still not an authorized national security issue.

Nature itself is crumbling around us. The past year, 2019, was the second hottest year on record, just a few degrees behind 2016. Five of the past ten years held the record for the hottest years. Our generation has not known a world where global warming was not so obviously present. About 413 tons of ice have been lost between 1993 and 2016, ice that has been part of this world longer than modern human beings. Due to the ice melting, sea levels have risen more than seven inches in the last 100 years. Even with this indisputable evidence that climate change is real and needs to be addressed, 23% of all Americans either are not concerned or even hostile towards the concept. These naysayers take up more than one-fifth of the American population, and they dismiss the idea of climate change as if it was nothing more than a mosquito bite. 

We cannot keep running from these issues. They are now, and we must confront them.