The Futility of Humanity

The other day, I was walking Mia to her AP Statistics class. We passed by a trash bin in front of the 600 block and saw a faux tree inside of it. At first, me and Mia laughed at the sheer absurdity; it's not every day you see a fake tree in a trash can at Righetti. The more I looked at it, the more I started thinking, and the more upset. I began to realize how that tree in the trash can is a metaphor for humanity's destruction of nature. People walked by it without giving it so much as a glance. That mirrors the sad reality that the vast majority of our society is so apathetic of our devastation of the once pristine, immaculate nature. The more I thought about it, the more upset I got. For the rest of the school day, it bothered me. I went home and decided to read my favorite novel, Alan Moore's Watchmen. While reading it, a quote struck me.

“We gaze continually at the world and it grows dull in our perceptions. Yet seen from another's vantage point, as if new, it may still take the breath away.”

I stopped in my tracks and thought back to the tree I saw and had an epiphany. The reason so little people cared was because we're so accustomed to it. We're bored with the Earth, despite it's seemingly endless wonders and awe inspiring beauty. But if we were to see it all from a different perspective, I can assure you more people would be for conserving nature. 

Who would have known that a fake tree would have elicited so much emotion?