Lasting Change

Al felt stiffness developing in his neck and slowly flexed to relieve it. He felt frustration rising in his mind upon feeling little surprise at getting stiff, considering how long he’d been sitting at his desk. Sitting with his head angled down, staring at his assignment description.

Considering how broad a problem the climate crisis is, what solution would you like to see acted upon to create lasting change?

Lasting change. Al shook his head as he tried not to focus on how his brain ached from going over the phase repeatedly for about the last hour. He still felt no closer to a truly effective answer.

Lasting change. Well, that was the big question where the climate crisis was concerned wasn’t it? The question everyone seemed to be asking regularly. To politicians, to those with knowledge or power, or just to anyone who would listen. The question no one seemed to have a good, broad-reaching answer for.

Al glance over at his laptop, which he’d set open on his desk to write the response for his assignment on. The screen had long since gone to sleep from lack of activity. Al glanced back at the assignment paper.

What had Prof. Tenner been expecting with this one? That the students would just reach into their drawer of ideas and pull out a perfectly viable one? More likely he just gave the assignment to amuse himself, Al mused, since he didn’t have an answer that would be any better.

Stealing a glance away from his desk, he looked out the window of his dorm at the campus outside. The late September sun shone brightly in a blue sky of few clouds, reflecting on the still green tree leaves and grassy ground. The sight made the drudgery in his mind noticeably ease.

Maybe that’s what I need. Some time outside. Al thought, and gave himself a deciding nod.

As he closed his laptop and reached for his dorm key though, Al realized that he wasn’t confident an outdoor walk would make the assignment any easier. Then again, he also didn’t see how it could make it any harder.

After a couple of minutes, Al had stepped out the door of his residence and was making his way across the campus towards its wooded trail. The sunlight and fresh air felt good on his face, but he didn’t feel it bring any new ideas into his mind. As Al neared the entrance to the wooded trail, passing one student reading at a bench and a study group of five at a picnic table, he allowed his mind to wander further. As he did, he felt it wander toward something that had often been a source of new ideas to him, movies.

Although, as a hobby, movies had quite regularly offered an inspiring escape to him, as they did for a lot of people, Al also felt that they could only get you so far. Superhero movies, for example, although they were exciting stories of struggle and triumph against great odds for the sake of good, were only a fantasy escape. Al had come to realize this since starting his environmental science program, and had resolved to work on not looking to movies as having all the answers to society’s problems. It had been a hard truth for him to accept.

Al paused suddenly, realizing that he had entered the wooded trail. As he glanced around to get his bearings, he saw that he had now passed the foot of the hill at the trail’s entrance and was in the shade of the tall trees beyond.

As Al regarded the trees and the shafts of sun shining through, he heard a bird’s song somewhere nearby.

Robin. He thought to himself, and felt his uncertainty and frustration noticeably ease. A second later, another bird’s call split the air. Bluejay. Al thought. Sure enough, the very bird in question alighted in a medium-sized tree some yards in front of him. As he watched it, Al felt himself smile. He may not have all the answers when it came to the climate crisis, but he did know his birds.

As Al resumed his walk and the bluejay flew away, he wondered why hearing and seeing birds was so calming for him. Probably because it represents the idea of a constant that I can rely on. He thought. Something that reminds me that, even though times are uncertain, the world as we know it remains unchanged to some extent.

As Al glanced at the green growth that surrounded him as he continued his walk, he felt that someone could very well get similar reassurance from the trees and plants. Like the birds, through long ages of evolution, the trees and plants know intuitively how to live healthy lives. As well as how to do so in peaceful symbiosis with the other organisms in their habitat. They simply make it the truth of their existence. Humanity could learn a lot from that.

Suddenly Al stopped his walk. He stared in wonder at the sunlit woods before him. Maybe that’s the answer I’m looking for. He mused. Maybe it isn’t enough to see the climate crisis as a problem we simply prevail against and move on from. Maybe, like nature does, we should make survival and peaceful coexistence a truth of our lives that we address in perpetuity.

As Al watched two leaves drift down in the sunlight from the canopy above, he wondered if perhaps that was the rampant problem in today’s society when it came to addressing the climate crisis. That people were only trying to think of a solution that would allow them to return to what they knew to be their normal lives before the problem arose. In reality, to truly solve the problem, they would need to make doing so a part of what they regarded as their normal lives. Hence they could ensure that the Earth’s environment would not only be saved, but preserved for the future as well.

Yes, Al thought, I think that’s the solution I’ll use for Prof Tenner’s assignment. Smiling now, Al resumed and quickened his walk, so that he would finish a loop of the wooded trail in time to write a first draft of his assignment before supper.

Of course, this realization didn’t stop at his assignment, Al realized. He should start thinking of how to make environmental preservation a truth of his life and waste no time doing it, as everyone should.

Funny enough, as Al continued his walk, he found himself thinking of a movie quote that seemed fitting for his state of mind. The final line of the first live-action movie for a particularly famous superhero, in which she said “This is my mission now… forever.”