I don’t fear death, but rather the unlived life. I don’t have to live forever. I just have to live. - Natalie Babbitt
Don’t you have a feeling that the world is going to end soon? We’re hunting and poaching animals ruthlessly to a point that we’re driving many different species into extinction; societies are being divided into different groups that can’t even tolerate each other; everybody’s so busy working and making money, we barely pay enough attention to each other anymore; and on top of that, we like to use advanced technologies to help us catch huge amount of fish from the ocean without thinking about the long-term consequences, but only focusing on profits. And as if that’s not enough, we are also filling up the ocean with garbage and lighting it up on fire.
But our planet is so beautiful! There are so many beautiful and majestic creatures out there, on land, in the ocean, and in the sky, creating the circle of life and making the entire ecosystem functional. There’s so much waiting out there for us to explore and understand. While we are dealing with racism, injustice and inequality, we have progressed a lot from before and we are continuing to do so. We have made many mistakes and we are correcting them, because this is what we always do.
You see, the world is complicated. It’s not black and white, it’s colorful, it’s diverse. But diversity also means complication. The quality of our lives has increased dramatically in the recent years, but I also know that famine is still threatening billions of people’s lives. People are dying from hunger, they don’t even have clean water to drink; machines are making our modern lives much easier, but to power these machines we need to use fossil fuel, which is causing all sorts of chain effects that are hitting up the planet really rapidly; I see pioneers are exploring space, defying aging and fighting cancer but I also know that there are more people suffering from obesity, depression and anxiety; I know there are many startups striving for innovation, but I also can’t ignore that the big tech companies are creating even more problems with the very platforms that were built with innovation at the very beginning. You can call me bipolar, but the world is not single, it’s multi-dimensional, and I see it.
We face many great challenges right now… it would be nice for all of us to sit down to work with each other so we can solve all the problems we have. But we’re much less patient with each other, we’re much less likely to put in the effort to understand different opinions and perspectives, but were more likely to blame others, to cancel others. Maybe this will get better in the future, but a lot of us are addicted to the pretty images and short videos on the internet, which makes us forget to look behind the scenes, to understand what is really going on.
Behind every environmental issue there are always complicated problems that require scientists from different disciplines to work with each other to come up with good solutions, every important scientific breakthrough needs to be communicated effectively to the public, to the audience. Because when people know, and when people care, things happen faster, so we can solve our problems much sooner.
Even though we’re all busy with life, with work, with school, all these global issues really matter to every single one of us, because at the end of the day, we are all these little creatures relying on this rocky planet that’s floating in the darkness of space. And if this planet gets messed up…We’re all going to suffer.
But in order to change this we need to break some boundaries, and to make boundaries we need to understand each other. And in my opinion, the best way to understand each other is to communicate by telling stories.
We need stories to help us understanding each other. We need more stories, and we need better stories. By telling stories we can change the minds of people, so we can bring us all a little closer. Only then could we have a better chance to conserve the jungles, save the oceans, and a better chance at a long-lasting future.
One story at a time, we are going to share with you the amazing stories around the world, and we are willing to travel the world to hunt down these stories for you. To be honest, I really wish that you could see the world through your own eyes. But when you are not able to, let us be your eyes.
And this journey, is because of you, and for you.
