Our Simple and Little Ways
By Peejay Herrera
Last sembreak, I was in Dumaguete with my brother, cousins and other relatives. We went to the beach until night comes. My brother, for lack of doing something, he decided to start a fire near our cottage.
There was one log left over and he tried all he could to set it ablaze. He used crumpled newspaper and burned it under the log. He added more newspapers to feed the fire. Still, the log didn’t burn. So he added more, and more, and more. Until he used up all the newspapers we have that night. Not wanting to accept defeat, he took a bottle of alcohol and cover the log with alcohol. The alcohol burned out but the log remained fire-resistant. After an hour, he finally got a blaze going.
What did I learn from this experience? First, that my brother won’t have a successful career as an arsonist or those criminals who burn houses or buildings. And second, it is not that easy to burn down a house.
It’s the same thing with the Earth. When God created it, it was build to last. So it is not easy to destroy it. In a magazine, I found 10 ways you could destroy Earth completely. None of them are possible unless you have the power of the justice league and the brains of Einstein and Newton combined. But 6.7 billion human being who lived without caring for their environment could be dangerous. I also read from that magazine that in the past two years, humans have damaged the environment in a massive way in the last 50 years than at any other time in human history.
Me, destroy Mother Earth? How do I do that? When we burn our trash in the backyard, we release toxins that will harm our environment and our health as well. When we litter, some of our garbage ends up floating in our seas which destroys corals that took hundreds and thousands of years to make. When we use up more toilet papers and other sanitary materials than we need to, these mean that more leaves and trees have to be cut down.
There are just SIMPLE AND LITTLE WAYS we can help and they might not seem a lot. But if you, I and everyone of us will take our role seriously, maybe we can help managing and protecting our Mother Earth.
