Hello everyone, I hope all is well with you. I’ve had a busy week at work and writing. I also took some time to get together with friends this weekend and walk down memory lane a little bit. I needed a night out, but enough about that. Today, I want to talk about cleaning up our planet for the next generation.
The first thing I want to address is taking better care of our oceans. Eighty percent of pollution in the oceans is plastic waste. Approximately, ten million metric tons of plastic enters our oceans every year, killing marine life, fish, and seabirds.
This is not just a United States problem. This is a global problem. We need to recycle and get everyone around the globe on board with it. The oceans are keeping our planet alive they provide at least half of the oxygen for the earth. It’s imperative we start cleaning them up now.
We can recycle. That’s the biggest step we can take as individuals. The less plastic we use the better. We can stop using pollutants like bug sprays and fertilizers. All of these find their way to the ocean.
So, by taking these steps we can take care of the ocean, but pollutants also have a negative effect on our land. They seep into our drinking water and contaminate our soil which makes growing food that much harder, and let’s not forget about the Bee. This little insect is so important for pollination, which is essential for us humans in growing our food. The use of insecticides kills these pollinators.
We should start growing our food organically and stop using pesticides all around the world. I know this will be hard to do, but if we get everyone around the world to agree to some kind of treaty, it’s not impossible.
I want our earth to be a viable place to live for future generations. I’m sure you do too. What steps do you think we can take now to ensure our kids have a sustainable planet? Leave a comment! I’d love to hear from you!
Hello everyone, I hope all is well with you. I’m back today after a week of writing, running, and work. Less writing this week because I had a busy week with work, and it is treadmill season, so I’m changing up my running routine. Not to mention day light savings time. This combination of a perfect storm had me exhausted at the end of the day.
At work this last week we had what management calls a boot camp. Kind of a training to hone your skills. Anyway, every morning to get things started we would do an ice breaker. One day one of the ice breakers was “Would you rather.”
One of the questions was “Would you rather live forever or move to a new planet?”
I chose, I would want to live forever. The reason being, I could see my kids grow up and see future generations. I was surprised to find other people in my group chose to move to a new planet because they didn’t want to see the demise of the earth.
My first thought when I heard this, was how do you know the earth is going to die? Maybe scientists will come up with something to keep it alive. So, I did some investigating and found that the earth is in fact, in dire straits. According to this article, https://www.livescience.com/ghastly-future-global-crises.html life as we know it will change drastically due to climate disruption, biodiversity decline, and human overpopulation and overconsumption.
This does not paint a pretty picture for our world. We need to start taking better care of our planet today to ensure future generations have a world they can live in. That means we need to clean up our act.
We need to clean up our oceans and plant more trees. Both are like the lungs of our earth. They both provide us the oxygen we need to breath and they soak up carbon dioxide out of our air.
So, there are two steps we can take. The next thing we need to do, is take care of our honeybees and other pollinators. By doing this, we will help slow down the biodiversity decline of our many plants and shrubs that we need to keep the earth alive.
The next thing we need to do is address human overpopulation and overconsumption. This is where we run into trouble. What do we do? Limit the number of kids people can have? Is that even ethical? Do we start rationing our resources? I don’t have an answer for this one. There are too many cons to these suggestions, so I pose the question to you. How do we save our earth? Leave a comment! I’d love to hear from you!
Hello everyone, I hope all is well with you. I’ve been working hard at work and on my story. I’m at the last part of the story and I’m so excited. It’s turning out to be a good one. I’ve put a lot of my heart and soul into this one, but enough about that. I don’t want to give away too many secrets on that one. 😊
Today, I’d like to talk about what kind of Earth we’re leaving to our kids. Have you seen the movie Wall e? It was popular when my kids were younger and when I saw the movie, I felt it was strangely prophetic. It’s the story of how humans had destroyed the Earth by leaving mounds of garbage and waste all over. They also destroyed the air because of smog pollution, so the planet had become toxic to humans. They had to move into a new world in Outer Space where every technological advantage was available to them. They became overweight and lazy. Pushing buttons for food, drink, and transportation.
Wall e is a robot that has been left behind on earth until one day he meets Eve. A new, sleek search robot, who comes to Earth to see if there are any signs of life. There are, she finds a plant that has started to grow. Wall e falls in love and follows her back to the new and improved world that humans now occupy. It’s a great movie and ends well with the human’s returning to earth.
Even though Wall e ended well, I wonder if, we’ll be so lucky. Our oceans are heavily polluted endangering sea creatures, and just last week, I found out the Amazon rain forest was burning. We need to take better care of our planet if we want it to be there for future generations. We need to clean up the oceans and take care of the bees and the trees.
I know, it’s a big job, and it’s going to be hard because we need the whole world to participate and get involved. It can’t just be the US. We need some sort of international treaty that holds all countries and continents accountable, but it also has to be done on an individual level. We all must take responsibility for cleaning up after ourselves and taking care of our trash.
I have an idea. Let’s make recycling big business. Can you imagine what it would do to the earth if we could sell our garbage to the highest bidder? People wouldn’t be throwing plastic in the ocean anymore, it’d be worth too much. It’d be like throwing money out the window. Who does that?
So, let’s make sure Wall e stays a fictional story and do whatever it takes to take care of our planet, because our planet takes care of us.
Thanks for stopping by and reading my post. Do you have any ideas on how we can clean up the planet? Leave a comment! I’d love to hear from you!
Hello everyone. I hope all is well with you. I’m back today and I want to talk about the fact that we’re all made from stardust. Isn’t that amazing? We all have the elements of iron, calcium, and magnesium in our bodies. We are literally the by-product of exploding stars.
That being said, we all are vastly unique at the same time. Just like snowflakes we all have our own makeup. Each one of us, even a set of twins, is different. I find this intriguing and it begs the question. If we’re all made up of the same elements how can we be so different?
It’s our DNA. The unique way it’s arranged makes us different, and that’s true, but I’m wondering how many different combinations there can be. Well, I did a little digging and the best answer I could find without going into a lot of scientific mumbo-jumbo is that there are seven billion people on the planet so there are four hundred and twenty billion different combinations. Wow.
Anyway, the point I’m trying to make is that even though we’re all made up of the same elements we’re all vastly different. Each one of us. But we’re also the same. It’s mind-bending when you thing about it. What I’m trying to say is we’re connected. And that connection is what I’d like to focus on.
Historically, we humans have been afraid of other humans who are different. People who have different skin color, different genders, different sexual orientations, and different ideologies. We need to stop ourselves for a second and instead of coming from a place of fear, we need to come from a place of love. That’s right. Love for our fellow man. We don’t all have to agree, but we do have to respect our differences while at the same time remember our similarities out number our differences. That is the only way we will be able to survive on this planet. You have to remember we continue to reproduce, but our planet does not and it doesn’t grow larger either.
In order for our species to survive, we’ve got to take care of ourselves and our planet. We don’t have time for anything else. In a crisis, I’ve seen people come together and forget their differences and work together until the crisis is over. Why can’t we do that all the time? Why does there have to be a major disaster before we’ll work together? I think we should work on that. Don’t you?
Thanks for stopping by and reading my post. Leave a comment, I’d love to hear from you!
Hello everyone. I hope all is well with you. I’m back today and I’m talking about some vital skills our future generations will need to survive on our planet.
Our kids are going to inherit this messed up world we inhabit and they’ll inherit all the problems our greedy society has created in our quest for more. More money. More possessions. More power. More. More. More.
The thing is we’re teaching our kids that striving for more is the only way to be. It’s not. We need to teach our kids the concept of enough and the concept of balance.
Why?
Because being in Striver mode all the time is not good for our health. If we continue in Striver mode and we continue to reproduce at the rate we are, we’ll soon be fighting over smaller and smaller space. We’ll be producing more trash and our landfills will overflow. This is a problem. By any chance did you see the movie “Wallie?” The Trailer is below.
In the movie, humans have to leave earth and move out into space into a floating world because earth is no longer able to sustain life. It’s covered in garbage and all the humans are too heavy to move or exercise. It’s an awesome movie and I’d recommend watching it with your kids if you get the chance.
That’s where our society is headed if we don’t start taking care of our planet and each other. Haven’t you heard? Obesity is an epidemic.
We need to teach our kids to slow down and take care of themselves. Because we’re in Striver mode, we eat fast food and processed food. We do this because it takes less time to prepare and gives us more time to work. What happens when we reach that pinnacle of success? We have more money than we ever dreamed of, but we can’t enjoy it because we don’t have our health.
We need to slow down and teach our children to garden and how to cook for themselves so they can control what they put in their mouths. By doing this, they control their health.
We need to teach our kids to be fair. We can do this by teaching them to empathize with their fellow man. Empathy? How do you teach that? By encouraging a love of reading. By reading about different characters, our kids step into their worlds and learn about them.
The more knowledge and tolerance they have for others, the better they’ll be at getting along with their peers. A vital skill when space is becoming smaller and smaller, wouldn’t you agree?
Reading you say? Yes reading. It’s also an awesome coping mechanism when you’re dealing with stress. Just an FYI. 🙂 Sadly, it isn’t a cure-all. We need to teach our kids how to communicate, using I messages so they can resolve conflict without a lot of negative feelings.
These Negotiation Skills will be in high demand in the future.
How can we teach this? By having our kids interact with their peers. Don’t let them play video games all day long. Don’t let them use their phones as their only means of communication. Arrange play dates and get them outside, playing games, and solving their own conflicts.
Last but not least. Teach them a love and respect for nature. Walking in nature is good for you. It’s called “Forest Bathing.” This practice originated in Japan, and there’s scientific proof it’s beneficial. Something I’ve known for a long time, but didn’t know there was actual proof of it.
“A 2010 research review found that forest environments promoted lower concentrations of cortisol, lower pulse rate, lower blood pressure, greater parasympathetic nerve activity, and lower sympathetic nerve activity than city environments. [6]
Forest environments have been found to be advantageous with respect to acute emotions, especially among those experiencing chronic stress.”[7]
Nature isn’t just good for you, we as a species need the trees and the bees in order to survive. The bees are our biggest pollinators. Thirty percent of our food crop depend on them to grow and ninety percent of our wild plants depend on them to flourish. That’s a tall order for those tiny bees wouldn’t you agree?
And trees? They provide oxygen. It takes TWENTY-TWO trees to provide enough oxygen for one person. There are 7.442 BILLION people on earth. That’s a lot of trees. Now do you see why it’s important to have a love and respect for nature?
So there you have it. My view on some of the essential skills our kids will need to survive on a shrinking planet. Are there any vital skills I’ve missed? Share your thoughts! I’d love to hear from you!
Hello everyone. I hope all is well with you. I’m back today with another Slice of Life Post. I don’t know about you, but I was very excited about our Super Moon that appeared on Monday, only to be disappointed to find it obscured by a cloud haze. However, I did get to see it on Sunday and it was very bright and it seemed to loom above us like a luminous Chinese lantern.
I think it’s amazing that the moon hasn’t shined this bright for sixty eight years. I’m so glad I got to witness this Super Moon because I’ve never seen one before. I realize how vast our solar system is and the fact that there are other solar systems out there makes me feel very small.
I’ve always been intrigued by the moon and our solar system. In fact, our family watches the Universe channel quite a bit and I’ve learned so much about our planets and stars that I’m flabbergasted.
When I think about the earth. I think about how it sustains life for us as well as many other species. I think about how the conditions must be just right in order to continue sustaining that life, and I realize how awesome our world is and how fragile it is.
There are so many things out in space that could destroy our planet, death stars, exploding stars, and asteroids just to name a few. I realize how amazing it is that our earth has been around for as long as it has.
I also realize that we need to take better care of our planet in order for it to continue to sustain life the way it always has. So let’s take care of our earth. It’s the only one we’ve got. 🙂
Thanks for stopping by and reading my post today. If you’d like to read other Slice of Life Posts click here.
Hello everyone. I hope all is well with you. I’m back today with another Slice of Life Post, and I’m talking about how Reading just might save our species.
What the heck are you talking about?
I know that’s what you all are thinking, but stay tuned and I’ll explain.
There are 7.4 billion people on our planet today. Keep in mind we only have one planet. According to experts, our planet’s capacity is 9 billion people. We’re living longer and still reproducing. We need to do something fast. The earth is getting crowded. So what can we do?
First of all, we need to teach our kids empathy for our fellow man. Why? Because our planet is getting crowded and we all have to learn to get along. How do we teach empathy? Get your kids hooked on reading. Reading for pleasure teaches children empathy. Without compassion we’re totally sunk as a species.
How do we get our kids hooked on books? By having access to a wide variety of them. There’s millions of books available to our kids, making these books easy to access is where we’re going to make strides in creating a better world for all of us, because reading for pleasure teaches empathy. I know I keep saying that, but it’s true. It’ been proven. I’ve written a whole article on it. Just click here to read it.
It’s important to remember that in order for our kids to become hooked on reading they must choose reading all on their own. Therefore, they must choose the books they read. So, we as parents have to accept and encourage whatever their choices are. Even if we don’t see the value in the stories they’re reading. So, if your child wants to read graphic novels so be it. It’s better than not reading at all.
So how do we as parents foster this love of reading? It’s easy. Start reading to them when they’re young. Model reading for them. That means, you as a parent must spend time reading for pleasure. We have to make time for it. I have my boys read twenty minutes a day. Most days, I read right along with them. Make reading a lifelong habit. It’s a great way to deal with stress.
I use it as a coping mechanism, when I have a bad day. I lose myself in a book for at least a half an hour. When I emerge from the story, my stress level is lower and I’m in a better frame of mind. (Another benefit of reading)
I have a great solution for road rage. Pull these people over and make them read for half an hour. Just think what that would do. It’d lower the rager’s stress level and teach them empathy at the same time. I like it. 🙂
So you see, Reading can solve a wide range of problems for our society, and I don’t think I’m far off the mark by saying it can go a long way to save our species. So, Read. Read as if your life depended on it! Yes. I’m being melodramatic, but at the same time I make a very good point. 😉
Thanks for reading my post. I appreciate it. What are your thoughts on reading, do you think it’ll save society? I’d love to hear what you think! Leave a comment!
