One of the world's biggest issues, in my eyes, is cruelty. We attack our peers on social media, we talk about our friends behind their backs, we leave people out. We watch schools get shot up, buildings explode, and innocent people get murdered. This all tells me that the world needs more heart. I strongly believe that mean people do not know the pain that they cause others; maybe if they knew, they would be nicer.

When I went to a summer leadership camp when I was in high school, I learned about The Smile Project. The Smile Project is a nonprofit organization founded by one of my counselors at this camp. She started this project in her senior year of high school with a few Facebook posts about what simple things made her happy. Seeing this woman, who wanted nothing more than for the world to smile, was beyond inspiring.

But most significantly, when I went to RYLA, I met people who had experienced things that I never understood as being so real. People who have been raped, who tried to kill themselves, who have been called things no one should ever be called. That is why kindness is so important to me. Because there are so many people who are not kind, who make others feel like they are not enough. Because I have friends who do not always feel OK. But kindness can make that feeling go away. So, if I could change one thing about the world, I would make it kinder.

Many people do not understand the cruelties of the world until they have experienced them for themselves. But we should not have to feel terrible things to understand other people's sorrows. We should not have to experience avoidable cruelties. Meanness is avoidable, all you must be is kind. And yes, sometimes the right thing is the hard thing. But it has been my experience that it is often easier to be a kind person than it is to be a mean one. I want to be able to tell the world that, that kind is the coolest thing you can be.