Today, I'm going to submit my opinion about the world. Yes, I am just another fourteen year old, amongst the millions of fourteen year olds out there and you may think I'm just another kid who THINKS that she understands the world, with all the information accumulated in her exceptionally plentiful fourteen years of life. Though around half of it involved obsessions with plastic dolls and worrying whether my mom got the white chocolate cookies instead of the milk chocolate ones from the grocery store, I have opinions and ideas too. You may find them ridiculous or genius (probably ridiculous) but nevertheless, I'm going say them anyways.

Think about your life right now. I'll give you seven seconds. Seven, six, five, three, two, one. Done? Bet you didn't notice I missed four. Or maybe you did, but just let me bask in the glory of my cunningness and pretend you didn't. Okay, anyways, back to your life. How is it as of now? I'm not talking about whether you got that perfume that smells like vanilla and happiness or if you got head shots on fifteen consecutive zombies on your video game. Like most of the people reading this magazine, chances are, you are still in school, money, food and toilet paper is still all provided by your parents and you live in a pretty decent house with plumbing, electricity, water and WiFi. Life is pretty good for you, other than that one pimple the size of the Himalayas on your forehead. Now, I'll give you seven seconds to think about your problems as of the present. Done? Good. What are they? Your friend who was talking about you behind your back? Your parents taking away your laptop because you may or may not have jumped off the roof with a bed sheet sewn on your hands and feet to reenact what a flying squirrel feels like? Or maybe even that teacher that gives you the I-will-tell-all-your-future-employers-that-you-once-ran-around-the-hallways-naked-screaming-ZUCCHINI-covered-in-cream-cheese look every time you sit down.
If these are the "big" problems in your life as of now, it tells a lot about society today. How our lives are so greatly facilitated that we are so easily bothered with such trivial things. When was the last time you had to mill flour, collect eggs (maybe a flesh wound or two from pecking) and churn butter until your arms feel like they are slow broiling to bake a cake? Probably not in a long time, and this is slightly concerning. The fact that we have so much free time that we hardly even acknowledge it nowadays and instead we spend most of it worrying about such little, insignificant things. And because of this, people are much harder to satisfy. Back then, when someone your age got, say, a notebook (not the electronic kind, the one filled with paper and you needed something called pencil to write in it with) they were ecstatic. Compare to now, you see ten year olds complain that their iPhone is outdated and they need the new one NOW. [insert ear drum puncturing scream here] Yes, human ambition and our desire of constant amelioration of our lives is a good thing, it causes us to innovate and invent, but it makes us harder to please. Our developments are rising at an astonishingly rapid pace, and with that, our standards do too. It's more difficult to make us happy and it's much easier for us to get irritated and angry. In our quest to make life better, the ultimate goal of happiness, we unknowingly are moving further away from it. Maybe that's irony. Maybe life is just a huge ironic comedy.

This probably makes you rethink about how this is going to affect us in the long run. It's not just us. There's a little thing called the environment, not sure if you've heard of it or not, but it's paying the fees for when we constantly swipe with our desire-to-make-my-life-better credit cards. Nothing comes without a price, not even the buy two bacon burgers and get a free apple pie deal at Wendy's. Mother Nature is trying to keep up with all these monthly bills, but remember, nobody, not even life itself, has a bottomless bank vault. Sooner or later it's going to run out. And when it does, all that's left is going to be empty boxes of Kraft Dinner lying around Mother Nature's house and the ever growing mountain of bills in the corner of her living room with which she needs a wheelbarrow to haul around. In the end, Earth is the biggest loser of this whole ordeal and she didn't even do anything. Is that really fair to her?

I'm not saying to plow down your house and build a nature reserve. Or throw away your Mercedes collection into the incinerator (because that would just be tragic). I'm just saying to take some time to just step back and look at your life. Appreciate what you have and be grateful for it. Changing little bits of your life helps, even if you think it doesn't. Maybe stop buying those key chains made out of baby panda fur. Or stop splurging on those cookies with that white truffle filling and use that money to instead give it to the homeless man on the corner of the street. It may seem small, but remember, anything multiplied by seven billion is enough to make a difference