Our Connection with Nature

Hello! We are the creators of @oragutanlife_pt, an Instagram account dedicated to environmental education. Our main goal is to try to show people the problems we face as a society in a way that everyone can understand and feel like they can do something about it: because they can!

We are three biology students, who are in love with nature and life itself, and we
believe that we (society) can save the world. We have realized that there is a lack of connection between people and nature nowadays and, even though it is not easy, we tried our best to come up with some solutions to solve that.

Since we are living in such an industrialized world, we barely have contact with the nature that surrounds us. We think the world is only ours and that is so much easier to reach anywhere and anything now with just a simple click, so why should we bother to go outside? The thing is that sometimes beautiful opportunities can come to us in that time outside!

When we stop and look around we can enjoy these little moments in nature but
sometimes we are just so overwhelmed with all of the responsibilities and stimuli of this complicated world, all those clicks, that we miss it. So we pass to our automatic response to everything that happens in our everyday life, to all the rush, we disconnect.

We can find this lack of connection in the relationships we have with animals, with food, with the weather, and the landscape, for example. By now you are probably wondering: how are these two problems connected? Well, we believe that to protect something, you have to feel something about it.

So, if we make people fall in love with Earth and its wonders, if we make people
connect to the nature around them, it will be much more likely for them to want to protect it and do something, no matter how small. Just think of the people you love and how you would try your best to protect them.

Another problem we have come to realize is that fighting for the environment has become a huge ultimatum, leaving people anxious, afraid, and feeling like they are not enough. The solutions often presented are too complicated, too time-consuming, and too expensive. So people get the idea that even if they try their best, it would not be enough and some just get hopeless and give up.

So, we try to communicate all of these problems in a way that gives people hope, while also understanding the urgency of it. We all know how chaotic the world is. We know we have huge problems to solve, but we won’t get far if we scare people away. Because there is also a lot of good news, a lot of good things and improvements that happen every day! People, and mostly mainstream media, just normally don’t give attention to it.

It is essential that besides using scientific facts, we also use empathy to approach the problems so we can make people feel the power they have to start a change. It is indeed worrisome but we believe that the change starts in one and every one of us. We also know that there are problems bigger than any one of us and that we need worldwide intervention and government responses. But until then, we can use our voices to reach out to others, to talk about all these issues, to make a change, even if it is small, that’s how it all starts.

The world is a pretty messy place to live in right now but we have to make people stop thinking about that and instead show them all the amazing things it has to offer: to recognize it as our home. You do not have to dig deep to find the wonders we have been talking about, sometimes it just takes our awareness to go to the sounds around us and we will notice all the birds, the wind, and the trees. On our way to work, we may pass some beautiful places we sometimes miss however if you look closely, the beauty is everywhere. We just need to pay attention to it.

On our account we try to bring awareness to this issue, invite people to go out and look and we invite you as well to do this. We also try to give every problem, a solution. You alone surely would not stop the problem of overfishing, deforestation for oil palm, or capitalism, but believe us, it’s always better to make a small change than nothing at all. If you make a small change, you inspire 2 friends, who will inspire 3 more, and so on, at the end of a week, you could be making a huge positive impact on 15 people, which is a lot. 

So, to conclude we do not deny the problems and their effects, we just think it is
better to look at them in a way that will make people feel empowered so they can change something. To change something you need to feel empathy for that cause, and that’s why we encourage people to go out, to see, smell and hear all of the incredible life that is always around us, that we take for granted and sometimes don’t even notice.

So go outside spread the word, start a change, and don’t forget the endless power you have to change the world!

Follow the @oragutanlife_pt on Instagram for more content!