A little guy vs. the big world!

Oliver asked me today how we could make a difference in such a big world.  Everywhere we go, we find litter, and we barely leave the neighborhood on the whole grand scale of things.  If the problem is this bad here, it must be bad everywhere.  Though I tried to explain it to him, he just could not wrap his head around the massive problem.  The world is huge, and there is no way such a little guy can make an impact right?  In his mind, this was not a problem, he seemed sure he could clean up the whole world, no problem.  He said it might take him a little while but he was gonna do it as long as we helped.  I agreed and all went back to well in his five year old mind.   

     Being the adult on the beach, even though the conversation passed, the idea still weighed heavy on my mind.  I started having thoughts of what can we do, and are we just wasting time trying to make a difference.  All signs pointed to the latter but then it hit me.  Yes we can make a difference.  Yes we can!  See the world is huge but our little stretch of beach is very small in comparison.  We might not make a global impact with our daily beach cleanups, but we are making a huge impact locally.  Every bucket we fill is one less bucket on our beach.  We might not be saving the earth but we are helping our tiny little neighborhood on this earth.  

     So we are going to focus on the local problem and hope that we can inspire others to focus on theirs.  We are going to raise our children to respect the earth and cross our fingers that they will teach the same lessons to their children one day.  One foot in front of the other, we will manage what today brings and as a family, we will CARE!