Let’s begin by setting the scene. Yesterday was high school graduation. After years and years of schooling and teachers and so on, everyone had finally made it. It's a time of celebration. Graduation parties are all over town, but it's when the next night comes along that things go too far. The senior party.
For tonight, we will follow Josh, one of the graduates. Unfortunately, Josh has his fair share of party experiences. From the moment Josh arrives, his mind is on himself. How can he have the best time, how can he finally catch Sarah’s attention, and how anything he does only affects him. If only it were true. Drink after drink, people all around become worse and worse but still need one more drink because as they say, “One more will never hurt you.” Fast forward farther and guys begin fighting for reasons they’ll never remember and girls are being more adventurous than ever before. Not because of the alcohol, they say they are too young for it to be that way, but because they say it’s a short life so live it up now. Josh didn’t get to Sarah before Eric did, so he angrily gets into his brand new car that his parents gave him for graduation and decides he is perfectly fine to drive home even though he can barely walk to his car, but it’ll be fine because he is still young and has a lot to do in the future. 25 minutes later, red and blue flashing lights illuminate the road, two cars are almost indistinguishable, Josh didn’t make it home. The other car and it’s passengers, a family of 4, has been reduced to a family of one.
A disease is running out of control in the minds of teenagers and young adults and it's this stipulation and idea that for some reason our youth and age is synonymous with invincibility.
Teenagers are living life on a basis that because they are still so young nothing can happen to them. That they still have so much to do, so nothing will stop it from happening now. But they are so wrong. Time and time again, news reports echo the same message of teenagers being lost before their time. We are told of their hopes, plans, and goals knowing they will never happen. Teen drinking is occurring at an alarming rate and even more awful is the amount of accidents related to this. In all things that they do, they are living in a way that they feel untouchable. They are having sexual relations, yet don’t think once that they may become parents before they have even moved away from their own. They find themselves in jails for thinking what they’re drinking or smoking will make them cool. These actions and the belief of invulnerability, the thought of “It’ll never be me,” is driven by this internally thought process that they are the center of the world, and things revolve around them.
Every community has those events and occurrences that are either spoken in hushed solemn voices or with anger and pain through every word. Time and time again, a teenager with so much hope and potential simply throws it all away for one terrible decision. A decision where only themselves were taken into account, and no one else. Choices like when a group of 3 high school boys decide it will be funny to drive down the middle of a highway at 95 mph, forcing people off the road and almost killing a mother and her children. A decision to go out on the hilliest road near town before graduation to jump the hills and instead of enjoying graduation with your two best friends, their families will never let you in their house and now you have to speak and share the experience constantly, unable to ever move on. At what point are the youth, as a whole, going to wake up? It is obviously not all of them, but the number that are is still all too high. I don’t want to lose friends, family, or classmates to these awful actions. That is why these words are here.
I can not even begin to fully and accurately put my true feelings into words. I can not stress enough that each and every person to come into my life, I care about. I do not want to lose them, I am not ready to mourn over them, and I am not prepared to mourn with them because a teenager lives a life with only themselves in focus and have no idea of how everything they do affects everyone around them. It takes a change of thought, one small change and things will be different. That may be what makes the whole situation worse, the knowing that everything could have been so vastly different if it were for only one change of decision. Teenagers, my friends, I end in a plea. Please open your eyes, see those all around you. Family, friends, even the people around you that you may not know...they all matter and so do you. Life is great and we need them and you here every step of the way. We are not ready to say goodbye to them nor are we ready to say goodbye to you. You are not invincible, but you can be strong. Not simply physically, but strong mentally, morally, and spiritually. Remember who you are and can become, not just because of yourself but because of all those around you too. Today you can make the world a better place by your choices, and I challenge you to do so. As my fellow brothers and sisters, I wish you good luck and I am ready to see the great things you will do with this change of mind and heart.
