World Cooperation

    In my backyard, there’s this place that I often call my own “Bridge to Terabithia”. Once you leave the last step, you enter an area that is so beautiful it’s almost cathartic. The vines curve around stone paths; one path leading to the pond, the other leading towards an old, rickety bridge. Surrounding the pond are exotic plants and colorful rocks, and often time you can hear the distant croak of a frog that’s found it’s home there. There are fish in the pond, one of which I named Snickerdoodle that will someday grow to be a foot long. And above all this are huge, towering trees with leaves that are deep red, green, and yellow and curve around the pond and surrounding plants as if to frame them.

    I watch the insects fly around our plants searching for something to eat. I watch the fish swim together in our pond. I listen to the frogs croak and try in vain to locate them. I sit on the old rickety bridge and pick berries off the low hanging trees. I pick out the rocks that are the most unique to save for later. And sometimes I lean against my favorite tree with the deep, red leaves and I think “Why can’t the world be as peaceful as this one magical backyard?”

    Maybe world peace is an illogical notion; where there are people, there will be conflict. However, sitting under that tree, I sometimes think about the concept of world cooperation. I noticed something during the time I spend in my backyard: the trees and plants, fish and insects, even the stone paths and vines; their existence intertwine with one another. Every part has it’s own place but both living and nonliving things cooperate within the limited space of our backyard. The fish and frogs have a habitat within our pond but they don’t interact. The pond aids the survival of the surrounding plants and trees, but many could survive without it. The plants provide food to the insects and the trees a home to the birds but they are free to come and go from them as they please. With the plants come the vines that twine around the stone paths and benches, all of which compliment the beauty of the botanical garden but aren’t absolutely necessary for it to stay alive.

    From a global aspect, peace would require us as humans to accept what is. However, it is not in our nature; we’re a selfish, money-hungry, at times, violent race. Cooperation, on the other hand, requires people alike to work together for the greater good of our world and the generations to follow; similar to the botanical garden. The plants and trees are representative of our environment, the bench and stone paths, the man-made invasions like pollution and hunting. The aquatic animals and insects that are a part of the botanical garden represent the people. More so, they represent are unwillingness to depend on one another; our thirst to be better than. I often notice that, though they share the pond, the fish will swarm away from the frogs and vice versa. The birds may live in our trees but never more than one nest of birds at a time.

  The bridge, however, represents the one thing that connects the world no matter how much we refuse to cooperate: our unrelenting pursuit of greatness. Be it as a country, or as individual people we all want to utilize the electrical current that connects us all with similar ideas, traditions, and cultures. The same magic that lies within my Bridge to Terabithia, lives inside of us. We’ve already begun, really. We see it all the time; one country borrowing another’s government system, food or dress traditions, languages and styles. With all of our differing cultures, languages, ethics, mindsets, and governments it is time for us to join forces globally to achieve greatness as one. It is time for us to cooperate within the limited space of our own metaphorical backyard. Maybe one day we can achieve the same magic I feel sitting within the stone paths and low-hanging oak trees.