Like most siblings, my sisters were connoisseurs in the art of chaos: bickering with each other, breaking things, blaming others for their actions. They always found ways to hurt themselves with their toys and left monumental messes of trash, food and toys. I commonly found myself being the janitor, often the only one. When it came time for my parents to come home, I had two choices. Either face the wrath of my parents and be swept up in the inevitable beration, or quickly clean up before my fate was sealed.

Now I’m older, and I have bigger worries than keeping the house clean and my siblings are in one piece. The scope of what I must handle has expanded on all accounts: my work, my grades, my relationships, my future, all dependent on my own effort. Or so I thought.

Nowadays, instead of watching my siblings bicker and blame, I observe the people whom I once thought to be the most responsible in humanity do the accusing, simply threatening war instead of letting diplomacy guide the way. The tensions between countries that world leaders create could have been easily avoided if it weren’t for hot-headed, well-planned yet impulsive, selfish actions that are commonly taken by the nations.

This constant barrage of take and no give is only creating a larger and larger hurricane that will cost hundreds of thousands of lives and homes, which will then be left for my generation to fix. But instead of the simple discipline of a mother, the consequences of failure to find solutions involve nukes.

Although my generation often jokes about the idea of World War III, the reality of it is more terrifying to people my age than to anyone else. Instead of obtaining peace, a happy future, a functional family, am I going to be forced to fight another decrepit man’s war and die on a battlefield like so many others? Why should I have to fear the loss of my natural right to the pursuit of happiness because my nation insists on using fear to secure their interests? Global tensions are reaching an apex at the exact time I, and so many others, become old enough to die in war, but not old enough to live a normal, happy life.

My goal in writing this is not just to complain and denounce world politics. It’s too late to go back and fix the world’s problems, and pointing fingers fixes nothing. But it’s not too late to break the cycle of war. We are becoming old enough to influence the world. We are now entering the workforce, learning to understand and expand on the work of our ancestors.
We are about to push through the repercussions the old generations have left us, and it will be up to us to decide whether we will follow their example and continue the cycle of war, or let diplomacy, logic, peace and new ideas guide the future generations. It’s wishful thinking to believe humanity could ever achieve true peace, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t, at the very least, try to clean up our messy home.