By James Wendt

Teens are obsessed with forever. The lure of a sensation that lasts beyond eternity lulls them into security. Teens are drawn to infinity because of the jumbled mess called young adulthood and known to some as Hell. With the world constantly changing, the hope of something everlasting drives their lives. In an episode of “The Mindy Project” on Fox, Mindy Kaling perfectly articulates the hilarity of forever. Her character offers advice to a young woman, Sofia, who comes and visits her ob/gyn clinic. Sofia thinks she is in love with her boyfriend and they will be together forever.

“You [teens] are obsessed with eternity. Everything’s forever: best friends forever or Henry and Sophia forever. It’s probably why you like teen vampires and stupid crap like that. Guess what? That stuff’s imaginary. Teens fall for this all the time. And maybe you’ll be really lucky and find the perfect guy and will stay together forever… But I’ll tell you one thing that will last forever: herpes,” said Kaling.

This quote perfectly and hilariously illustrates the human experience in our culture. From a teen’s perspective, one can observe the effects of the word forever. The idea of forever and the word itself is comparable to Sofia’s boyfriend and teens are simply the naïve Sofia who is later dumped by said boyfriend. Sofia realizes the reality that forever is an empty promise, but from watching the show, one might discover that when she believes in that promise, she is happy. While eventually most humans accept that forever is illegitimate, that does not make it wrong to believe in it. Teens put their faith in a concept that is eternal because it makes them feel safe, and there is nothing wrong with that, so long as reality is eventually faced.

Teens’ bodies are changing. Their ideas are changing. At the very core, teens are changing. While this may lead to awkward voice-cracks and years of therapy expenses, this phenomenon still renders those subject to it helpless. Forever becomes the hero that validates one’s actions and allows him to believe that he is important. Teens say forever because they can’t bear to think that their relationships and their lives are insignificant. In the grand scheme of things, teens are struggling to stay afloat in an ocean that is changing while they merely wade in the shallows.

Teen have best friends forever and romantic relationships forever because they need to assign timelines to relationships and experiences in order to maintain sanity. The reason society has a tendency to smother our culture with forever is because nothing teens experience is. The very people who are promised forevers often become the people who are only memories in the future. This very thought is enough to make teens shake in their young bones, and that is why they say forever. The word is over used and abused because it is a protection. It is the boyfriend or girlfriend who teens will outgrow. For these reasons, teens have become dependent on forever and for now, that is acceptable. And in the future, like a childhood teddy bear, the youth will no longer need forever. They will be living it.