Two years ago today, the world changed.

It was a simple thing. A movie was released, the culmination of five years’ work by an incredibly talented and dedicated team. A story about a bunny who wanted to make the world a better place and a fox who was never going to let the world see that it got to him. As they interacted, they changed and became better as a result of the other’s influence – the bunny becoming less naive, and the fox learning you can be more than you currently are.

But simple things are often the ones that leave the biggest impact. This simple film, which taught lessons every child and adult should apply in their lives, was a huge success by all worldly standards – it earned over a billion dollars in the box office, had an insanely high score on RottenTomatoes, and even won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature (along with almost every other award it could possibly win).

But the success of Zootopia can be seen in other, less obvious ways. Zootopia taught us many things that we need to learn in today’s world. It taught us to recognize bias in ourselves, not just in others. It taught us to look outside of ourselves and to do things we may have never considered doing before. It taught us that prejudice isn’t a binary principle – that everyone possesses some biases, and that we don’t always know the full story behind someone’s actions. They may act a certain way on the surface, but when you get to know them you can discover someone that defies all expectations, be it for good or ill.

To put it in the succinct words of Judy Hopps:

No matter what type of animal you are, from the biggest elephant to our first fox, I implore you… Try. Try to make the world a better place. Look inside yourself and recognize that change starts with you. it starts with me. It starts with all of us.

From all of us at ZNN, and on behalf of our entire community of Zootopians, I say to Byron Howard, Rich Moore, Jared Bush, Phil Johnston, and every other amazing person at Disney who worked so hard to bring us this wonderful film…

Thank you for making the world a better place.

And for everyone who reads this, I too implore you to try. Try to make the world a better place, in whatever capacity you are able to. You may think you can’t do anything to make things better, but even if it’s something simple, like getting to know someone who needs a friend, you are making the world better. It doesn’t matter if you think it will actually work, or if it will make a difference. You never know everything a person is dealing with, and so you never know how much of an impact some kind words might have on them. Simple things can make a huge impact on the world.

So please… try. Try Everything.

Here’s to another wonderful two years of this community, and to making the world a better place.