Keep a green branch for Mother Earth.

(ABO) One June morning, I walked along the old village road – a place where my childhood memories were filled with the buzzing of cicadas and the rustling of bamboo in the wind. Suddenly, I stopped before a barren patch of land, where there used to be a lush banana grove, where we children played hide-and-seek every afternoon. Now, everything has been leveled, leaving a bare, cracked expanse of land under the scorching summer sun. There's no more shade, no more birdsong, not even the pungent scent of wildflowers that used to come with the first rains of the season.

I stood there speechless. Something lingered, like a wound in my memory. Nature, it seemed, was weakening with each passing breath.

Every year, on June 5th ( World Environment Day), newspapers, social media, and communication campaigns all speak out. People call on each other to save electricity, reduce the use of plastic bags, and plant more trees.

But then, after a few days, everything faded into oblivion, as if it were just a fleeting trend. Nature doesn't need empty promises; it needs true love, coming from a heart that listens and hands that know how to preserve it.

I remember my grandmother – a simple country woman, whose life was spent in the fields and by the hearth. She didn't have much formal education, but she lived in harmony with nature in a very instinctive and kind way. She never cut down young trees, never burned trash during droughts, and never dumped dirty water into ditches. When cooking rice over a wood fire, she meticulously picked up dry branches and gathered fallen leaves to start the fire. Once, I asked her why she didn't cut down some trees to use, and she just smiled gently: "As long as the trees are alive, let them live, my child. If we live with love for the earth, the heavens will reciprocate."

Back then, I just chuckled, thinking she believed in fairy tales. But as I grew up, experiencing dry seasons, hearing people lament their fate, and seeing groundwater levels dwindling, I realized she wasn't living in a fairy tale at all – she was simply living according to the laws of nature: If you take care of things, they will last; if you love, you will be loved in return.

Today, we live in crowded cities, with every inch of land and every street covered in concrete. Every morning, people rush to work, jostling amidst traffic, sometimes not even bothering to look up at a green canopy of trees.

Children born in the city may never have smelled the earth after the rain, never climbed a tree to pick fruit, never floated a paper boat on the first floodwaters of the season. For them, nature is something alien – like a fairytale picture they can only see through a phone screen.

That's understandable. When rivers are choked with waste, when forests are cut down for factories, when the ground is covered with plastic and chemicals, nature no longer has the vitality to touch the human soul. But what's even sadder is that humans have forgotten that they are not the masters, but only a tiny part of that ecosystem.

Every action we take—no matter how small—creates a chain reaction. A seemingly harmless plastic bag today could be carried away by the waves and get caught around the neck of a turtle trying to find its way back to its nest. A lighter thrown into a bush could burn down an entire forest, depriving countless creatures of their habitat. Things that seem harmless, when combined by billions of people worldwide, can create a global crisis.

I once read somewhere that, "We don't inherit the Earth from our ancestors, but borrow it from our descendants." That statement serves as a wake-up call. We have the right to use nature, but not the right to destroy it. What we do today will determine the future of our children and grandchildren – will they live under the shade of trees or only know nature through books?

World Environment Day is not a holiday for displaying slogans. It's a day to remember, to quietly reflect on the seemingly obvious things we are losing: the green of leaves, the salty taste of the sea, the sound of wind rustling through rocks, the warmth of the sun. It's a day to start with the smallest things: turning off lights when not in use, planting a tree in front of your house, walking instead of driving, saying no to single-use plastics...

I believe that everyone can maintain a "green branch"—a good habit, an act of kindness towards nature. Even if it's just a reusable cloth bag you carry to the market, a glass bottle instead of a plastic cup—it's a small thing, but if enough people do it, the world will change.

In one city, people plant trees on their rooftops. In one village, children learn how to compost kitchen waste. In a small corner of the market, people set up waste sorting bins and teach each other how to recycle. These small, seemingly solitary seeds are the hope for the future. The earth doesn't need heroes, it just needs people with a sense of responsibility.

I think of my grandmother—who lived her whole life in silence, yet left me with a profound lesson about connection with nature. She didn't need anyone to call her to act. Because in her heart, the earth and sky were her flesh and blood. And I understand that loving nature is not a responsibility, but a part of one's nature, a sacred feeling that everyone carries within themselves.

If one day you feel utterly weary, go out into the fields early in the morning, listen to the birds singing, touch the leaves, and smell the fresh grass. Nature will heal you. But only if we know how to cherish it.

Let's preserve a green branch for Mother Earth – not so that we may live longer, but so that we may live more virtuously. One day, when our children and grandchildren ask, "What did you do to protect this Earth?", we will be able to smile and answer, "We didn't turn our backs on nature."

LAN DUC

Source: https://baoapbac.vn/van-hoa-nghe-thuat/202506/giu-cho-dat-me-mot-nhanh-xanh-1044573/