While walking my dog this evening, I was having to keep her from walking directly into a pile of shattered beer bottles and eating an old condom she found on the sidewalk. I should probably be teaching my dog not to eat the things she finds on the sidewalk, but what angers me is the seemingly lack of care people have for the world around them.

We are visitors here on this planet, we are renting our space on the Earth and repaying it by polluting our waters, destroying the forests, and solving problems with violence resulting in the absolute ruin of people’s homes. I get that these problems have been going on long before our time, and I am sure that I can’t be the only person out there that feels this way. But, in a generation where the theme seems to be a lust for travel, wearing flower crowns, and wanting to ensure harmony around us all, I don’t get why these things keep happening.

Walking along the streets of the small town where I go to school, I see countless red solo cups, alcohol bottles, and cigarette butts that have been laying there for who knows how long. One morning walking to class, I even saw an older gentleman taking the time out of his morning to clean the trash out of his own front yard (no doubt in my mind it came from the college kids- I don’t think a man in his 70’s would be downing a bootlegger for fun, and throwing it on the ground after a wall sit, but who knows). My point though is that, it gets me thinking what would the streets of this quaint little town look like if we all took the time to pick up our trash? I’m sure my dog wouldn’t accidentally be eating a condom wrapper, for starters.

The Great Barrier Reef has been pronounced terminal, and we just elected a president who passed a bill allowing a rather large pipeline across the grounds of people who’s homes were stolen from them. I am at a point where I think this has got to stop. If we put the same amount of time actually trying to maintain a perfect environment as we do to getting the perfect picture, with the perfect lighting, I think we could all be happier with the world as it is around us all. It saddens me to think one day the things that actually allow us to enjoy this Earth vanish because of our lack of care and attention to them.

The Earth is a sensitive place, and she is currently crying out for us all to stop and help restore what we have broken in such a short amount of time. We need to focus our attention on our connection to nature and the environment around us. We were made from it, and it’s time we start thinking of how we can better serve it. It’s time for a change.