Holidays honor people or events. If you could create a new holiday, what person or event would it honor and how would you want people to celebrate it? Use specific reasons and details to support your answer.
(a) Most countries already have many holidays. In my country, Taiwan, we have nineteen official holidays. However, I believe that my new holiday, “Walking Day” would be very beneficial and should be added to the nineteen holidays Taiwan already has. In this essay, I will outline the three main reasons why “Walking Day” would be a very good holiday.
First, walking is good exercise. As we all know, people all over the world are becoming busier and busier. They are studying more and more so that they can have better jobs. When they work, they are working more and more. As a result, people have less time for other important things in their lives, including exercise. We can read reports in the newspapers everyday about people who have worse health and complain about poor health condition. Exercising more could reduce many of these problems and walking is one of the best and simplest exercises for people.
Second, by walking, we can reduce pollution and thereby protect the environment. As technology improves all over the world and people have more and more money, they are starting to use this money to buy automobiles. As a result, people are using public transportation less and less. Driving one’s own car every day has had a very large impact on the environment as a result of the pollution created by gas burning automobiles. Walking is the perfect way to reduce pollution since there are so many other benefits as well.
Finally, by walking, people can slow down the pace of their lives. Perhaps this is one of the greatest benefits of walking more. Life at the beginning of the new millennium is stressful–people are competing with each other for better jobs, countries and companies are competing with each other for business. Many people start to forget about the importance of slowing down in their lives, of simply enjoying the moment. People need to contemplate life more. Walking is a perfect opportunity to slow down, think about life, and simply enjoy the big, beautiful world that we live in.
Finally, we could celebrate this holiday by encouraging people to walk instead of driving or taking the bus for at least one trip during the day. I believe that people could find at least one trip during the day that they could make on foot instead of some other form of transportation. For example, if people usually drive to a large supermarket to buy food, perhaps they could walk to a closer, smaller market to buy only a few things. I believe that while people were walking, they would be able to enjoy the exercise and the fresh air and would be able to think calmly and clearly.
In short, if I had to create a new holiday, I would create “Walking Day” because of the many simple benefits it could provide us.