By Tina Olivero
What would it be like if everyone could see the world as “their home” in the same way we see our cars as “ours”, our homes as “ours” and our children as “ours”. Often we feel they belong to us, yet when we raise our children, we don’t really “own” them, but, rather, we take stewardship of them. We become responsible for their well-being, growth and evolution. What if we felt that the whole world belonged to us, and we took the same stewardship and responsibility for the planet’s well-being? That’s a very big question, worthy of your thought.
The world is our home. It does belong to each of us. Planet earth is uniquely destined to house us, shelter us and clothe us. Much like a parent, Mother Nature takes care of our every need, from the air we breathe to the ground we walk on. And what do we do in return? We pollute her.
Creating a clean planet is an act of personal and corporate consciousness, and all actions begin with thought. Thoughts become actions, and actions become results: 1-2-3, in that order. Therefore, the future of the success of our planet BEGINS with the WAY WE THINK! When we change our view of things and see the world in a different “context” like, ”the world is my home”, then everything we do and see will change.
We wouldn’t throw garbage out the door and into our own backyards so why would we do so on the street? In context, then, “the world is my home” means we might not waste our electricity so easily and we wouldn’t think it’s ok to have cars, trucks and factories spewing pollution into our living rooms because it belongs to “us”. We wouldn’t chop down all the plants in our beautiful gardens, and we certainly wouldn’t dump truck loads of non-perishable garbage on the front lawn. Indeed, understanding that the world is our home is a shift in the paradigm of people’s thinking.
What we own has been bound in the parameters of our tiny life views that include a home on a street, a car, a few kids and our direct family. Expanding that view as Mother Nature had intended automatically creates a whole new realm of possibilities. Mother Nature truly is our mother, and she’s provided for us in every way. It’s about time we stopped acting like rebellious self-centered teenagers and grew up. Finally, we need to realize that what hurts one, hurts us all. What benefits only the one is a level of self-centered thinking that is our current demise. Without change in attitude, this one could literally “poison” us all.
Just one dropped plastic chocolate bar wrapper may take 20 – 40 years to decompose. If everyone in the world dropped one chocolate bar wrapper, that could be over 6 billion wrappers dropped on the earth’s surface. Do we drop chocolate bar wrappers in the street? Yes! Do we do it more than once? Yes. Are we contributing to polluting our homes and our own backyards by not being conscious of our actions and its cause and effect? You bet we are!
Yesterday, as I was walking into the grocery store, I saw that a guy had just gotten his cash out of the cash stop and then threw the receipt on the ground. It landed right in front of me. I stooped down and picked it up. He turned back and looked at me, just in time to get a glimpse of me putting it in the garbage bin. I looked at him, and I just smiled as I concluded, “he must think I am a bank account snooper or a waste paper stalker”; laughingly, I didn’t care. He muttered back to me as he walked on, “Leave it, someone will clean that up”. All the while I was thinking, “Who’s someone?”.
Did you know…
how long it takes for some commonly used products to biodegrade, when they are scattered about as litter:
- Cotton rags — 1 to 5 months
- Paper — 2 to 5 months
- Rope — 3-14 months
- Orange peels — 6 months
- Wool socks — 1 to 5 years
- Cigarette butts — 1 to 12 years
- Plastic coated paper milk cartons — 5 years
- Leather shoes — 25 to 40 years
- Nylon fabric — 30 to 40 years
- Tin cans — 50 to 100 years
- Aluminum cans — 80 to 100 years
- Plastic 6-pack holder rings — 450 years
- Glass bottles — 1 million years
- Plastic bottles — Forever
Source: http://www.worldwise.com
