Earth Day 2023

What is Earth Day, what does it mean to celebrate it? If you want to know the actual history of Earthday, follow this link: https://www.earthday.org/history/
Otherwise, everyone seems to have a different idea of what this day stands for, and there are many different ways to celebrate it. Like anything else, the whole idea is picked up by some corporations and used as another way to greenwash. So BEWARE!
Earth Day, or saving the planet, does not need to involve consumerism in any way. There are lots of things to be done that do not incur any cost. Just a little mindfulness, or thought, made by lots of people doing little things will add up to major changes. It is the choices we make that will change the world. It is the things we do as well as the things we don’t do. When we broaden our view beyond the myopic ME, we can see what is undeniable. “How do you eat an elephant? – One bite at a time.”
As a society we have gotten to the place that many of us are reasonably comfortable. We just want to be left to do what we want. “You do you and I will do me!” And so we make choices without consideration for a time or place beyond the NOW. We are trained from the time we can sit up to buy to be happy. More is better. New is best! There is no consideration to how this affects our world. We are aware of our home and maybe our street, but not beyond that, and certainly not any country outside our own.
We buy new and discard the old with a simple toss. Out of sight, out of mind! We purchase things we don’t need. We use once, and discard. We waste and squander our resources, or worse yet, someone else’s resources. Just because we can.
What if we all tried something new? What if we each made one little change? None of us can save the world’s problems alone, but we can each take one bite until the elephant is gone.