Maybe when you were younger, you thought you could change the world. You thought about all those things that were happening, all those bad people, all these problems like “global warming” and “poverty” and “low wages” and you knew that when you grew up, you would change all that.

Then you did grow up.

I haven’t yet. I’m still young, in high school, still idealistic, still just about to make a difference. I’ve talked with some people in college and they plan to make the world a better place too. I know how to program, I have awesome ideas and though I haven’t fixed everything just yet, I always feel that I’m just on the verge.

So what changed with you? What’s different between you and younger-you?

What I hear quite often when I ask people is that they too felt the same way as me. But then they left school, got a job, had to pay taxes and found that they couldn’t change the world. You’ve tried voting and it doesn’t work (first past the post is awful; we could change that!). Maybe you joined a protest and realized that it didn’t do anything. Maybe you supported a politician and found that they really didn’t care about what they’d said or that they too were unable to make some change.

Then you just stopped trying. You just stopped caring.

Or have you? Don’t you still listen to the news or read it on Medium or Twitter or somewhere similar and shake your head at the stupidity of Donald Trump or shake your fist at the latest thing taking away a few more of your freedoms?

I think maybe something similar happens to politicians. In Canada Mr. Harper became prime minister promising to reform the senate. He was stopped by the courts when they told him he needed permission of the provinces.

In the US, Mr. Obama became president promising to repeal NSA surveillance. This never happened and it in fact increased during his presidency.

I suspect that Mr. Trudeau, having come in promising that #elxn42 will be the last election with first-past-the-post, will quickly find it takes longer than a term to change an electoral system. We can only hope he doesn’t give up.

But as citizens, we’re actually in a pretty good position. We don’t have to make the tough decisions but we can force politicians to make them for us. That’s what elections are for, that’s what plebiscites are for and that’s what petitions and protest are for.

Yes, you say, those things help. But I can’t help them. I’m just one single person, a really small minority against an extremely vast majority.

This is true. In fact, I’d say this is the most discouraging fact. But let’s think for a moment.

My only other writing piece on Medium got 101 reads. That’s small in comparison to what some of the other people here get. I expect this piece will get 100 or so reads as well, then die out. But if every single one of you (and you in particular) read it and think “Huh, he’s right” and try yourselves to change the world, maybe something could happen.

But I know what you’re probably going to say now. High school kid eh? He doesn’t know anything about the real world yet. He doesn’t have any experience changing the world.

Once again, you’re right. I’ve tried to make a difference a couple times, created a few (in my opinion cool) websites and got some people to use them (usually one tenth of what I hoped for). So yes, I don’t have any experience changing the world.

But what would happen if I could persuade you that you should still try? What if I could persuade you to persuade your friends and for them to do the same? Then you, your friends and I would have done something.

And with that in mind…

5 reasons you should care about changing the world