Project 1-

Samuel, W

Tonia, P

ENGL 1101

February 9th, 2020

Dear my Children,

Dear my children, I am writing this in my English class at Chattahoochee Technical College. It is currently February 5th, 2020 and I hope that this message still carries some weight when we read this together one day. I think a lot about you even today, I know you will do great things so I worry about how others perceive the world around them.

    The world is a scary, yet hopeful place, a place where it feels like there is very little middle ground in-between viewpoints. A world where everyone wants us to believe that we are different, that we could never agree on a situation because we are not the same.  When in reality, all of us really want the same thing. We all want a healthy planet, a safe home where our children can have fun and play outside, we all want to see natural ecosystems thrive and not be taken advantage of. When individual countries dump hundreds of millions of pounds of plastic in the oceans every year it can feel like one person's mission is impossible. The world may feel like everything is caving in yet, there is hope because humans just like you and I have adapted to what is necessary since the dawn of man.

The world around us is full of beauty, and we are responsible to keep not only the communities around us clean and thriving, but the jungles, oceans, sky, and everything in-between as close to its primitive state as possible. The gorillas in the jungles deserve to live freely, they should not have to worry about their children being taken by circus’ and black market sellers. The fish in the sea should be able to jump and enjoy the sun while eating as they please, yet our oceans and ports are covered in unnecessary plastic and human waste across the board, including oil. Simply because coffee is generally grown in wide-open fields, hundreds of acres of trees and these birds’ homes are taken away to keep people across the world warm in the morning or energized in the evening. While our air slowly depletes as our favorite major companies burn non-renewable resources when we know the power of cheap, efficient, and renewable energy sources such as solar power and nuclear power. We may not realize it, but we take advantage of our planet every single day. While we cannot stop other people in other places from doing nasty or even evil things to our planet, we can do our part, whether your part calls you to move to the jungle to protect the gorillas or protect from the poachers in Africa, or to invent an ocean cleanup device, all I ask is that you try. The collective responsibility to cleanup Earth cannot be fulfilled without everyone's individual responsibility to try.

While the world may have its problems, we are no fortune tellers and we are not God. Every day we make strides to change the world. Every day one more person decides to use paper instead of plastic, every day someone makes the decision to turn their lights off when they leave their home, every single day someone realizes their carbon footprint and takes a stride to reduce it. While impulsive or immediate action may seem necessary, all I ask is that you ask yourself, What could I be doing better? How could I improve the community around me? Because if everyone thought that way, the world would harmonize.