As I stare from inside the plane’s small window, I look down and see death lurking just anywhere about. Below the wings lay vast masses of water stretching to places I cannot see, the water is colorful, colorful as it shouldn’t be. Giant lumps of colorful, yet translucent material floating around the globe. I shut the window and ask my grandpa what life was like before all this matter started wandering the seas. Grandpa lowers his face mask to speak. He can’t have it down for long, the air can be lethal to his lungs. Grandpa takes his time to open his mouth as if he is trying to grasp the faint memories of the past and join them together like pieces of a puzzle. “It was green” he muttered in a small yet clear voice as dived into the past I never knew. For every phrase that he said, I would respond with 100 questions as it sparked my curiosity. The same world yet so different, same ground but it seemed so distant. “There were flowers and bushes in the garden next to my house” he continued. I remember learning on TV that grass and other plants had to be grown in specialized labs that have fresh air and clean water. This was hard to take in since any form of life could not be outside without filtration masks. “We used to have fresh wild fish on our dinner tables” he continued. To be honest, I’ve never actually seen living fish let alone them swimming in the wild. All the fish I ever ate were farmed behind closed doors. Our conversation is interrupted by the flight attendant who asks us to put our masks back on. For a while, all I can hear are the engines roaring as we glide above the dense smog. Since the sun is blocked most days of the year and beaches are limited to people because mass clean-up projects are taking place, which makes it hard for me to fathom what a sunny day at a beach would look like. At school, we take field trips online to places that used to exist during grandpa’s generation. Although I love to see these exotic scenes, a part of me seems to always feel empty when I acknowledge that this is not my reality; not the one I live in. So I sometimes blame the generations before me, my grandpa’s generation, for being selfish. For enjoying the world for themselves before wrecking it to its core. For leaving the mess behind for the coming generations to burden. But then I find myself realizing that the situation cannot be reversed. That all this resentment does not change anything in the current situation. That regretting after it has become irreversible is futile and irresponsible, and therefore we should prevent regretting it in the first place. So as the plane lands, I think about how I want the world to be when I leave it. That I want to leave it in a better state than what I inherited. That I want to be responsible for the world I have. I leave the plane as a different me before getting on it. A more determined me, with a clear goal and plan to execute. I leave the airport with my first small step that will lead me to big ones.
Birds I view
작성일시
2022/02/04 05:25
Author
Alexander Kim
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