What a Wonderful World

Posted by Shirley Siluk Gregory Jan 18, 2007

I was scanning the radio dial a while back, searching for something to listen to, when I came upon a true classic: Louis Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World."

I lost myself for a while in the sweet melody, then started paying attention to the lyrics:

"I see skies of blue and clouds of white

The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night

And I think to myself, what a wonderful world."

The truth and depth of those words suddenly struck me: It really is a wonderful world, I thought, and it's the small, deceptively simply things that are often most wonderful of all.

Not just skies of blue and clouds of white, but other things we often forget about or take for granted: how plants almost miraculously turn sunshine and water into the carbohydrates that nourish us, how the human body functions so effectively to use those carbohydrates for growth and energy, how the Earth and the sun are both just right -- size, distance, elemental composition -- to nurture life on our planet, how all the complex pieces of nature, from the microscopic to the mammoth, fit together to creat a single, interdependent, intertwined organism.

And that's why it's so important now for us all to start living greener and more sustainably. Because this marvelously functioning Earth, with all its many interconnected parts -- plants, minerals, animals, water, climate -- has been thrown out of balance by us and by nobody or nothing else. It's our responsibility, our duty, and our survival-preserving obligation to clean up our messes and get back to being able to truly enjoy a wonderful world.

Oh yeah.