In the month of February, four teenagers in my very own school district killed themselves. The fact is blatant, and much too true. It is like the first bitter sip of coffee in the morning, which slowly overcomes you and spreads throughout your whole body. Most likely, bullying was a major factor. Of course bullying is one of the leading cause for suicide, it is a fact we all claim to understand, and we all very well know how to change. Stop being mean. It’s that easy, that simple. Don’t whisper how annoying she is under your breath, don’t say bad things about him for being like that, you don’t know him, you don’t know her, and you never will. Change, forgive yourself for ever being mean, and simply move on. It is in human nature to be mean, so don’t fret if you ever were.

However, I believe that the cause for suicide is a heavily unrecognized yet still very glaring problem. We, as a society, are putting unrealistic amounts of pressure on ourselves to be perfect. Why? Other than the fact that we all want to be perfect, it is in our nature, why is it that our generation is feeling an increase in this pressure, whether we have put it on ourselves or it has been loaded onto us by others?

Due to unlimited access to the internet, it is much more difficult to force ourselves into a naïve perspective on the progress of the world. We cannot ignore the newest headline, which pops up every time we hit the “internet explorer” button in the bottom left corner of the taskbar. We know that we are the “next generation”, and the World’s only hope for survival. We are all very well aware that the adults claim have built up a beautiful country and are currently singlehandedly destroying it, and we will be left so slowly rebuild it, brick by brick by brick. In fact, that is an overwhelming amount of pressure.

It is time for us to learn something. We can’t be perfect, and we will never save the world. No matter how much we study, we will never be able to get 100% on every test. Not only that, but we will never be these perfect circles of peoples that we want to be. We are squares, every single one of us, and we all have sharp edges and awkward, glaring corners. It sucks to be a teenager in a world that does not seem to be getting any better, but we need to understand that the whole world is only ever going to get better if we stop letting those fears that we can’t win get the best of us. It is time to stand up, look ourselves, our mothers, our friends, or the world in the eye and tell them that we are going to work hard to achieve our dream of an awkward, lopsided square and not try to be a circle. Imagine that, a world filled with thousands of millions of billions of peoples that look in the mirror and see their corners screaming at them, and laugh and walk away because they know this is who they are and who they will always be. That will be the day that the world begins to change.