A World In Change

• Hannah Campbell, Grade 8, Brighton Secondary College
• Poetry
• 2014

Excellence Award in the 'Write As Rain 2014' competition

If humanity had a chance to escape this earth and start again, we would make the same mistakes. We talk, talk, talk but we never listen. We say everyone can make a difference, but in this world power is not determined by intellectuality and beliefs but by your pay check.
We all want to live in world where it is safe to walk on the streets at night no matter what race, gender or sexuality you are, but none of us have the courage to make a stand. How can people say that we will never be able to solve world poverty when we already have the cure to this disease? We find it acceptable to spend $50 billion every four years to celebrate the world’s best, but won’t spend a cent on the worst. Maybe one day we will be fighting for more than a shining trophy.
Some of us are undernourished and others obese, and both are dying because of it. Our greed has overtaken everything, even though when there is nothing left what will money count for? We need to change our ways, but the only way forward now is back. We don’t know when the world’s resources are going to dry up. When all the snow has melted, when all the water has dried up and there is nothing left, what then?
We destroy. We burn. We torture. And we never ever learn. If there is anything that is wrong, we will complain. We turn up the air conditioning when it is slightly warm, drive our cars everywhere, and destroy thousands of kilometers of bush, and we wonder why the earth’s climate is changing. The people with power do not have the courage to stand up to their expectations, and no one else can influence change.
It makes me feel small. It makes me feel insignificant. I know I can’t change anything. It makes me feel like everything I do is worthless. We don’t know if when we wake up tomorrow the world will be the same place. And it makes me angry to know that if everyone in this world wanted to, we could change the way it is. We live in oblivion to the real problems going on in this world. And one day we will drown in the tears of this earth.