A Fox

These weekends I spent in my hometown. My family decided to go to the countryside and visit our grandparents. As I was eating the third apple straight from the tree, grandpa told us about a fox. He noticed it a few times near the house.

My mum said something like how weird it is for a fox to come from the forest to people’s houses, and grandpa said: "The world is changing now". These words, these simple words were surprisingly shocking to me. It was like in a movie. The character says a pompous phrase, the clouds turn grey, and you realize that soon something terrible will happen. The world is changing and we don’t know what’s going to happen to our planet in the future. But it’s not a movie, it’s real life.

A few days ago the UN posted a report about climate changes. It says that if we don’t do anything with our consumer lifestyle in the following 12 years, consequences can be irreversible. The planet is warming up which is the reason for melting icebergs and so on. We have only 12 years! I’ll be only in my early thirties by this time. It always seemed that we had enough time or some new Einstein would figure this out or at least our generation would be dead when the anti-utopia scenario would become real life. But this is happening now. And we should do something, we have to. So what can we do? What changes should we make?

In my opinion, we should start from ourselves, our everyday life. How often do you drink coffee to go and take a disposable cup? How often do you throw a plastic bag into the garbage? How often do you ask for an additional straw when you drink your milkshake? Let’s begin with the small things. Let’s just think about it. Do we need this straw, this plastic bag? Do we need to keep the tap on when we brush our teeth? Is it really worth it?

The next step is not so scary either. We surf the internet in order to find a recycling center in our city. You will be surprised that even small towns have their centers. It’s not so frightening, right? The following step is for braver people. We can buy our own coffee cup and ask to use ours in a coffee shop. Baristas will be glad to fill your own cup and may even offer you a discount. It’s cheaper for them not to use a disposable cup. If we are brave enough to do it, we can easily have our own bags when we go to the grocery store and (OMG) weigh bananas without a plastic bag.

So step-by-step it doesn’t sound so scary, right? I’m writing this article on a wonderful October day. The sun is shining, the weather is just perfect and the smell of freshly faded leaves is making me feel amazing. And I can’t imagine that we can lose it so easily. So when you take another disposable cup, another plastic bag, another straw, think about the best day of your life. Was it sunny? Or maybe rainy? Was it in summer heat or in winter cold? Were the weather and everything just perfect? And do you really want to lose it? The next step is yours, and I believe you will make the right choice.