The world is a messed-up place. But hey this is the opinion of a 17-year-old girl… don’t take my word for it, or do, by all means. 

Now back to the world… beautiful isn’t it? With its lakes and trees and rivers, people of various colors and creeds, at the same time it’s so ugly and vicious. Come to think of it we humans have really messed things up. We were given a world with beautiful nature but we go and ruin that for ourselves. 

All for what? A few more cement boxes to live in? More cars to drive off of petroleum that pollutes the very air we need to breathe to survive? 

We were all made the same, all of us, same two arms, two legs, stomachs, heads, and hands, yet we choose to hate each other in the name of race, color, gender, county, size, and many more futile differences. Love was meant to be between two people, marriage a way to survive and keep the agricultural land within the family… how has that led to not accepting gay people and forcing 13-year-olds to get married? Everyone talks the talk, no one really walks the walk. People have become so desensitized to things and have become so selfish, that even giving our leftover food to a beggar is considered a great, applaudable deed.

Our society is heavily society dependent… I say this because, no matter what I want to do, the first thing I think is “what will people think?" we are so used to it that we don’t even realize how often we think this or how much power we have given the other person’s opinion. It has been drilled into us so hard that we must live by what people tell us that doing something remotely different is considered ‘rebellious’.

You must have heard this a million times and will probably roll your eyes once you read this, but being a female in our Indian society is hard. Everyone automatically assumes they have a say in everything you do, say, the way you look, who and when you will marry, what you will study, and loads more. You just cannot exist in peace. For example, if you are a woman on the healthier side and lose weight they will say ‘ Aish have you seen her? She is putting in so much effort in her appearance, she is so shallow and she must have a secret boyfriend”, but if she remains healthy they will say “ Aish have you seen her? If she continues like this who will marry her? She should put more effort in the way she looks.” 

See? You just can’t win. For some reason women are thought to exist for men… and it infuriates me. I’m not saying that women are better than men, I'm only saying that we are equals and deserve to be treated that way.

The same goes for children, we rob them of their imagination and freedom by limiting their brains and cramping them with mostly useless data in institutions called ‘schools’ which ironically were made to teach children. Schools don’t teach children unfortunately, they only educate them. Children are told what to do rather than letting themselves explore themselves and their surroundings. Maybe in the past memorizing information was a necessity, as no other means of retaining facts and data [as books, etc.] was not available, but now, with libraries at every corner and the internet being vastly accessible, that is no longer a need to memorize everything. The time children spend memorizing rather than learning, being educated rather than understanding can be used so much better by them by learning traditions, spending time with family and playing! How often do we see carefree children unburdened by their parents’ and societies’ expectations nowadays?

Another topic that frustrated me is the carelessness with which we treat our nature. From class 6 onwards at least we have been taught about pollution, written essays on the topics and seen educational films on it, and this is only from an educational standpoint of view… we see polluted water bodies [take our Hussain Sagar as an example] various cancers being caused due to pollution and see trees slowly disappearing - with our own eyes… yet… I have seen students, my friends even, eat chips and throw the wrappers and packets on the ground and not even think twice. It is just saddening. The irresponsibility with which humans live is frightening.

But, there are good things about the lump of rock we inhabit. Everything has a yin and yang, a good and a bad, an angel and a devil if you will. Change is coming, but it is slow. However, I guess that cannot be helped. It is often extremely irritating that I cannot make things different with a snap of my fingers, but unfortunately I’m no Thanos, nor god. Until that day comes.

Thank you.

.    .    .