Written by: Gia
Imagine yourself in this situation. City with plastics and garbage on the street and ocean. Road with car honks competition and angry people yelling at each other. Pregnant woman, moms, and kids are standing on a bus while teenagers are sitting and listening to their iPods. People tend to patronize others, without doing so themselves. Hard to admit and yet, all these situations remind me of us. All of us.
“Change will not come if we wait for some other person, or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.” What a beautiful insight delivers by Barack Obama.
We have seen many people do good things for others. From planting trees for earth dedication to volunteering in helping earthquake victim in Nepal. From teaching poor kids how to read to feeding hunger children in Africa. If you are one of these people, you should be very proud of yourself for going extra mile. Because you are an asset to the world.
We don’t need to feed hunger children in Africa or find trees to plant, just yet. Merely by sharing a little portion of our love will help to change us and the world itself. Starting from the easiest action can be a good stepping stone to continual improvement.
Mahatma Gandhi once said, “Be the change that you wish to see in the world.” So let's see how much change we can bring to the world.
WALK A LITTLE FURTHER TO GARBAGE CAN
As humiliating as it is, I had to admit that I stopped throwing trash in public only since junior high. I know, should have been sooner. I realized that it was totally wrong not to throw trash on its can, made me ashamed. I saw once in Singapore, a mother was furious to her five-year-old son for throwing trash on the street. And her son promised her to put trash to garbage can from thereon. Hence, if you still throw trash not at the right place (even occasionally), you should be embarrassed to that five-year-old kid.
REDUCE PLASTIC AND WATER USE
Egocentricity. Lack of attention to surroundings. It is understandable that every human being possess this kind of selfishness sometime. But when it comes to our home, the earth where we can live for free, is it humanity to still be ignorant?
Most people have less awareness to think about the earth, after all we get. Amazing beach we go vacation to, beautiful animals we enjoy viewing at the zoo, unlimited water we use every day. But what did we give in return to the love of mother earth?
We take plastic bags from grocery stores even though our grocery is easy to carry, occasionally toss plastic or trash to street / ocean without guilt, ignore water taps in public restroom because we think it’s not our responsibility to turn it off.
Did you know that plastics can literally kill seabirds and other animals as they mistake plastics for prey? Or that somewhere in the world a pelican bird died after ingesting 17 plastic bags? Moreover, somewhere else there are little kids dying of thirst and there is less drinkable water in the world every day. From what I read and proven scientifically, there is actually less than 1% of all the water on earth can be used by people. The rest is salt water or permanently frozen as we cannot drink it. Did you know this fact?