Written by: Aayotrie Chaudhary - 27019, Grade VIII
Posted on: 13 January, 2023
I was suffocating. The skies were grey and full of smoke. Trash flooding the streets, if you didn't watch your step you would step right into some muck. People say that the masks we wear aren't important anymore , but I don't see how they could've survived without it even before the whole deadly disease broke out. Not many people survived it, and the ones who did, are only wallowing in their own self pity. No one cares anymore about the planet, it seems we are only left here to wait for our ultimate demise. It seems we are just sitting around and waiting for our chance to leave this earth. For most of us that is what we accept as true, for the rest, it's only a matter of time. They all feel so hopeful at first, full of life, almost like a ray of light through the smoke and dust polluting the air, then they become helpless, their fairy dust that keeps them happy slowly starts to trickle away. Soon no hope is left and it feels as if we are only here to be helpless against our mistakes, our ancestor's mistakes, the future generation's mistakes. We all have lost hope, and yet, there's her.
She has been here long enough, long enough to start feeling the self pity, and yet, she still has her glow, her shine, her fairy dust that makes her happy, still intact. She keeps fighting even if her fights seem to lead to failure, no one seems to understand. No one understands how she can keep fighting even though it is obvious that it is hopeless. Most just sit and do nothing but wish, the others ignore the world for what it is , but not her. She takes new fledglings under her wing and tries to get them to help, they don't really understand either, but they help and I feel she is content with that at least.
I, as well as everyone else who has felt hopeless admire her, though, there are still few who simply scoff and think what she is doing is a waste of time, and effort. I tend to disagree, we all had a time where we would have fun, enjoy, and see the world in a different light, a less dark and smoky one. We would all wish and try to help change the world, but, unlike her, we gave up, we thought there was no hope, yet if we gave up, if all of us gave up in the end, then how did we ever just know, rather I believe we just all seemed to guess and due to the others pressure, we just simply, gave up.
She isn't giving up though , even when people scoff and tell her it's no use , she isn't giving, not when people pressure her and tell her what she is doing is useless, not when her fledglings eventually leave the nest as well and agree with those who continuously berate her. She plants trees with what seeds she can possibly gather, and even when they wilt due to the terrible condition of the air, soil, water, and more, she just keeps trying. She keeps working, finding people with hope and trying to keep their hope from trickling away.
Secretly we all wish to be like her, have her strength to keep going, even those who turn their head away at her efforts, even those who insult her regularly, they all just wish they had what it took to be like her, to have hope and to try and understand why the world is the way it is. Even while her efforts seem to being nothing and scum yell all the time that she is useless, she keeps on trying to make the planet a better place, she keeps trying to get more people woke, she keeps trying to succeed even when it leads to her having to be lonely while people watch her pick up the garbage flooding the streets, the world. People stare and gaze at such a different sight, but really it is our fault that the sight is so different. Shouldn't we be there as well , shouldn't we be trying to help her out, shouldn't we try to normalise helping our planet. But we are not, we seem to be sitting lazily in a room that is slowly filling up with our pity, our pity for her, our pity for the world, and most of all our pity for ourselves.
The world is turning grey, our skies won't be clear, pollution is taking over and the world is getting hotter. Our planet is warming up, whether we like it or not, however we are not doing all we can to stop it . We are sitting still while people cut down billions of trees annually, we are sitting as factories all around the world poof up smoke and Carbon Dioxide up into the air. Fine particles in the air are killing many as each year goes by. Trash and garbage are filling up the streets, so much that you can't even go outside without spotting a few and we are not doing all we can to stop it. We are suffocating in this world full of smoke, dust, debris, etc. And we seem to not care enough. If we do not do something soon, we will ruin this world we live in. This world could be so beautiful and full of greenery as well as life if we just try. We cannot give up on our planet, not just yet.
