blue marble

There it is.
Home.

I think about this little, blue marble a lot. It gets me down sometimes. When I see it like this, though, it makes me want to cry... for gratitude.

The first photograph of the earth from space was taken in 1968 by the Apollo 8 mission. Read about it here. For the life of me, I can't believe that seeing that image for the first time didn't set us straight. I mean, when you see it, when you really see that it's nothing more than a lucky piece of rock hurtling through the universe, how can you ever go on thinking that you can do whatever you want and damn the consequences?

There are lots of metaphors for the planet on which we live:

our mother

a life raft

a turtle

the garden of Eden

gaia

First Nations peoples use the medicine wheel which symbolizes the four directions as a reminder of the interconnectedness of all things. The directions, the seasons, earth air wind fire, the stages of life, the human subject (physical, mental, emotional, spiritual), nearly everything can be understood in fours - even the planet.

And it's shrinking. The planet, that is (figuratively, I should say). A few days ago there was a horrendous tragedy in Haiti (an earthquake this time, if you hadn't heard). Around 5 o'clock the day of, I got a sinking feeling and an overwhelming desire to be alone. I felt ill. Physically ill. This was around the same time the earthquake in Haiti took place. Do I think it's a coincidence? Of course I do. But when I learned about the earthquake (through twitter, of all things) a few hours later, I could not help but form a connection between myself and a natural disaster that happened thousands of miles away.

It's only because I want to, though. I want to feel connected. I want to believe that my inexplicable moods are somehow tied to the tectonic plates or the scale of suffering that they cause. I need to feel like there's something larger and that I'm a part of it. I look at that blue marble, insignificant in its cosmic context as it is, and I see one planet. Not one people, not one race, not one civilization: one planet. Nevermind all that anthropocentric malarky they've been pushing. We homo Sapiens are an exceptional species among myriad other exceptional species that have a made a home on this little, blue marble.

And it's a planet that is full of solutions to any problem we could ever invent.

Natural disasters are going to happen. We can't stop them, and we can't really predict them very well. What we do do really well is come back afterward. We rebuild. We start over. We don't give up. And the only way we can do it is if we recognize that we're all in it together.

All one of us.