For as long as I can remember, the world has been in utter turmoil. I was born in 2008, the year of the financial crash, and one of my earliest memories is finding my Year 2 teacher crying at break and asking her if it was because ‘the Blues beat the Reds’. Next thing I know, we’re leaving the EU, Trump is going feral across the pond, and all I see every time I look on the news is death and war. Momentary peace - and then, devastation as Covid ravages humanity, taking away many young people’s mental health, or for many, even worse, in the form of family, friends and education. Now, I see the far-right taking over Israel and Italy, and only narrowly losing France. I see wars in Ukraine, Syria and Somalia, as well as in many other places. I see genocides in Myanmar and China, and children being shot in America, Thailand and even as close to home as Liverpool and Euston. 

My parents tell me that this isn’t what the world is really like; that usually things are much more calm and we don’t have five prime ministers in six years, or global pandemics, or lunatics storming the United States Capitol. I try to listen to them, I try to hear them, but every day I learn of more strikes, more funding cuts, more deportations and it is as if, besides from the clear atrocities happening globally, the very fabric of the society of the country I was born in is falling apart. Our generation has watched helplessly, unable to vote, or act, or at times, even leave our homes. In school we are taught how to prepare for our futures, but it often feels as if, between climate change and political chaos, we don’t have any kind of future worth preparing for.

Generation Z are unique in the sense that life has never been normal for us. We don’t even have a clear idea of what ‘normal’ is. And our parents’ ‘normal’ is so far in the past, so cemented in things that no longer exist, that the ‘normal’ they cling to will never return. So it’s up to us to make a new normal. We cannot watch as our country, and our planet, are torn down by people who make decisions for us without even considering their impact. We have the capacity to turn things around, by protesting, reading magazines and newspapers like this one, writing our own articles, and (as soon as we can), by voting. We are going to be the next leaders of our broken world, and the last generation to have the opportunity or means to heal it. Let’s make a new ‘normal’ together, one that our children can experience too, so that future human beings can feel what we have never felt: stability and security.