Reflection

Reflection

My old definition of the word “resilience” was a type of stubborn solitude. I thought resilience was innate. And that once the environment lost its resilience, there could be no restoring it. But I learned that is not the case. Environmental resilience can be rebuilt with human intervention. Even though human activities are changing the global landscape at an alarming rate, they can also bring back balance through acts of restoration and reforestation. We, as a society, have to work together to give our planet resilience. If it weren’t for trees and forests, I would never have picked a pencil and begun drawing a decade ago. I went back to my own roots working on this piece. Our future generations will be living in a world dying at a pace they cannot stop. But if we begin now, there is still hope—hope for sustainability, health, and peace. I wish more people would realize that if we don’t step in and fix our harmful habits now, there will be no future like the past. What I aim to convey with this drawing is hope and appreciation for the forests of this world. The scars of deforestation run deep, but it is not the end. Like a puzzle, holes can be pieced back together again with green new beginnings. The end is when people let go of hope. One sapling at a time, we—humanity can restore nature.