2023 Middle School Winners

7:00 a.m. The alarm buzzes. 

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I drink my morning glass of water. 

I wash my face. 

I brush my teeth. 

I take a shower. 

Over and over, my hand reaches to turn on the faucet.

 

      About a month ago, in my World Geography class, I came to learn that my morning routine  may not be the case for everyone. While I am washing my face and showering with loads of hot  water, a girl in Mozambique walks miles home balancing containers filled with water on her head, sometimes several times a day. The average American uses over 100 gallons every day. The average Mozambican uses 3 gallons at most, in the same timeframe. Yet, despite these  flinching statistics, many people do not care much about the water scarcity issue and still use  much more water than they need to. 

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     So if I could change one thing about this planet, it would be everyone having empathy. 

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     Often, we dismiss many issues in the world as things that are not our problems. As long as we  are not directly affected by it, we ignore the problem and move on. The water scarcity issue is  just one example. We lack empathy when facing many other problems. For example, while  climate change may just mean slightly warmer weather and heavier rain to many of us, those  who live in poverty are not able to adapt to and recover from the heat waves, floods, and ice  storms that climate change can cause. But because we do not recognize and understand the  struggles of those people, we still use fossil fuels without a second thought, forget to turn off  the lights, and neglect recycling. 

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     I also saw an absence of empathy when I learned that unaccompanied child refugees crossing  the border get locked in cages. I first heard about this only a little while ago - during my English class in a video about Maggie Tokuda-Hall, a writer who refused to revise her author’s note for the Scholastic company and turned down their offer. In her author’s note, she wrote  about different types of discrimination happening nowadays. The first that caught my eye was about kids being locked in cages at the U.S. border. It made me think, how could they do this?  How could they treat people, the same human race, like animals? The authorities do not think  about the hardships and emotions that the refugees had to endure, and thus mercilessly separate families who are seeking asylum. Also, even though this has been covered by the media several times, many people do not pay particularly close attention and often ignore these tragedies.  

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     Another issue is school shootings. Just in 2023 alone, there have been 19 school shootings.  None of the people who committed those crimes thought about how the victims, their friends  and family, and the whole community would feel. While many politicians conveniently use  the phrase “sending thoughts and prayers,” to console someone who was involved in a school  shooting situation, the people who have the power to stop school shootings from happening  do not seem to have real empathy for the grieving communities of these victims. The first time  I experienced an intruder drill at school, when I was living in California, was a shock to me. It  seemed that instead of trying to stop the school shooting, we were preparing for what we  should do when it happens at our school. This shows how people in positions of power do not  understand how much we as students fear these situations. 

 

     But with empathy, we can make a difference. Empathy lets us understand what someone else is  feeling, share their perspectives, and take meaningful actions to reduce their hardships and  suffering. If people put themselves in the shoes of Mozambican girls, they would not only save  water but also take tangible actions to solve the water shortage issue by donating to causes that  build infrastructure, remove contamination by filtering the water, and improve sanitation in  water-scarce countries. If we looked at climate change from the view of people who are living in a coastal village with rising sea levels, we would immediately switch to LED light bulbs, use  energy-efficient appliances, eat a more plant-based diet, reduce food waste, and much more. If  legislators could really feel how heartbreaking it would be to lose a family member in a mass 

shooting, the gun control laws would probably change. If the authorities patrolling the border  saw child refugees like they see their own kids, would they still lock them in cages, like animals? 

 

     One thing we should remember is that empathy is different from sympathy. Sometimes we  sign online petitions or create hashtags, believing that we’ve done our part. I also have signed  several petitions for various causes. But the hard truth is, it’s likely that we forget about these  causes as soon as they stop trending. This is only short-lived sympathy or pity. With sympathy,  we are sorry for the problems but feel relieved that these problems are not happening to us.  With empathy, we try to take steps to solve the problems. When I first learned about the water  scarcity issue, I only had sympathy for the people who are struggling with a lack of water. I felt  sorry for the kids who had to miss school to collect water and was just grateful that I could  turn on a tap and water would come rushing out. But as I watched more videos about their  lives and did more research on the solutions, I realized that just because I clicked a button  doesn’t mean their problems will end. If we don’t think of them as our problems and our  suffering, we cannot truly make an impact. No matter how many petitions we sign.  

 

     Of course, empathy alone is not a definite answer to all the world’s problems. We also need  education, policy interventions, and structural changes to solve many problems we are facing.  Nonetheless, empathy can foster understanding, compassion, and unity, which are important elements in the fight against any problem in our world. With empathy, we can start solving  many problems together, one step at a time. That is one thing I want to change about this planet.