On April 22 we celebrate Earth Day to remind everyone and ourselves of the importance of our environment. Let’s be honest, we treat this world so poorly, yet it is our only home.

Now there are lots of movements that try to make the environment at least a little better, and it’s great to see people who actually care for our home. But I think our problem has deeper roots. And sometimes cleaning after ourselves or reducing plastic isn’t enough at all. So, for today’s post I decided to share some of the things, that will help us make this world a little better. Now, I want to warn, that I’m not going to give the same advice, like having your own shopping bags, or trying to recycle everything, because I guess everyone already knows that. My tips are more connected with our attitude that can actually change the world.

1. Be nice to nature. Love and respect it. Just because nature doesn’t have a tongue to talk back to us, doesn’t mean we should ignore its boundaries. Don’t burn grass, don’t leave trash when you have a picnic, don’t cut dozens of trees, just because you want to build yet another cafe or a shop or a parking spot for your car. Don’t pick flowers just because you want to see them in your vase for a couple of days. There are people who grow flowers in greenhouses, or farmers who try to make at least a little money by selling, for instance, lilacs from their garden. And if you love flowers and want to see them in your house, you can get them without actually harming the nature. And in general, don’t take nature for granted. It’s a whole living system that is way more essential and powerful than we, simple humans, are.

2. Be nice to animals. We destroy homes of animals to create big cities for ourselves. And then we refuse to help them survive in these new wild conditions. Lots of countries have the culture of feeding animals, especially stray cats and dogs (and don’t forget the birds). People create special places to put water and food or even build little houses for them, and I honestly respect those countries and people so much. But besides that, just be kind to animals. They’re also creatures, who need love, kindness and attention. Whenever they see someone, who plays with them or strokes them, you can actually see the happiness in their usually sad eyes. And it’s also important to teach children to treat animals good, because sometimes kids think of them as toys, not realize that they also feel pain. Hurting or killing animals should be legally punished.

3. Be nice to people. I know it doesn’t really have much to do with environment at first sight, but in reality I think it is highly important. Because we treat each other even worse than we treat the Earth. People rarely help each other, they have become so egoistic that don’t want to see anything or anyone except themselves. They often treat others (especially those, who work in the service field) as their servants or even slaves, like they’re inferior to others. And I truly think that kindness will change the world. It will make us all become more accepting, tolerant, respectful and compassionate. And when all these positive characteristics start taking over the bad ones, we’ll start understanding more and will stop destroying everything just because we want to or we can. Because when a person is sincerely happy, they want the best for everyone else, and only then they can create a better future.

4. Be nice to yourself. Again, it may seem that this isn’t correlated with the topic, but I reckon it is. As I said this before, I truly believe, that if a person doesn’t love themselves, they can never truly love anyone else. We, every single one of us, is the future of this world. How can it be good, if we aren’t? So, we must work on ourselves, try to become better, stronger, healthier (physically, emotionally and mentally), more sympathetic, wiser and nicer. We must raise and educate our children in the same way. We shouldn’t try to make them have good grades or have enormous achievements. But we should teach them to become just good people with big hearts.

I know this all sounds very idealistic, something that can exist only in utopias. To be honest, I doubt that we can ever live in a happy world, with no disasters, wars, hate, cruelty and brutality. But one thing I’m sure of, is that we should try our best, even if we don’t really believe in making this world a great place. Everything I mentioned in this post are simple things that don’t really require time, energy or money to “implement”. It only takes two things: kindness and thoughtfulness. And that’s all we need.