Reflection

I read the news most days, articles filled with terrifying facts and estimates. And I understand climate change. I understand the scientific basis of it and understand the horrifying consequences. However, I can skim through studies and reports and still feel distant. I think it’s a problem a lot of people have—we are detached, disconnected. We somehow feel separate from the issues at hand despite being the ones causing them. Over the summer, my family went back to a beach we hadn’t been to in years. It was still in good condition; waves ate away at the sand and local groups volunteered, picking up litter. For the most part, it really did look the same, but as I swam further out, I glanced at the crumbling coral reefs beneath me—this more than anything else scared me. It’s easy to see problems as existing but still not truly comprehending their magnitude. The destruction of these reefs changed that for me. It was a small shift, sad, but ultimately not the end of the world. However, that was what struck me—it personalized things, it made the problem mine. That’s why I wrote my poem. I wanted to take a large-scale issue and look at it from a localized view. I wanted to take facts and statistics and reports and turn them into a story, trying to personalize this destruction. I am going to keep doing this. I am going to keep trying to tell these small stories that sometimes get lost in the larger picture.