The Place We Call Home
#ConnectedByEarth
A question quite simple
Yet not easy to explore…
What defines home?
People, places, or something more
Perhaps places to belong
And loved ones we adore
To share, live, laugh and learn
Yet the irony of it all
In order to truly belong
A place to start is with oneself
And the capacity to love others
Surely involves learning to love self
Earth is where we all belong
With sentient beings to love
And perhaps our one real home
Still, we neglect our planet
And can’t seem to get along
So, perhaps on this Earth day
A promise to keep — Love oneself
And a pledge to protect our home
To love the land, air, and creatures all
Maybe we can find a way to truly belong
To a home within and beyond…Happy Earth Day!
It’s Earth Day — celebrated each year on April 22nd since 1970 — a day kept aside to take time to appreciate humankind’s connection to the Earth and to raise awareness of the environmental challenges — and perhaps the most widely observed secular holiday around the globe.
Our blue planet is an estimated 45 million centuries old — yet this century is likely the first one where one species — us! — can have a significant effect on the fate of our planet.
Martin Rees, the United Kingdom’s Astronomer Royal and a founder of the Centre for the Study of Existential Risks at Cambridge University, recently wrote about the risks that face us. He writes that our globally-linked society is increasingly vulnerable to the unintended consequences of powerful new technologies — including but not limited to nuclear, biotech, cyber, advanced AI, and space technology. Yet, he considers himself an optimist and offers a path towards avoiding these risks and hopes that we can achieve a more sustainable future than we live in today.
“If all of us passengers on ‘spaceship Earth’ want to ensure that we leave it in better shape for future generations we need to promote wise deployment of new technologies, while minimizing the risk of pandemics, cyberthreats, and other global catastrophes,” — Martin Rees (Source: Science Daily )
On Earth Day 2024, the world is more engaged and enraged than ever with the need to understand and protect our planet, our collective home. A few years out of the peak from the coronavirus pandemic, filled with fear, tragedy, loneliness, frustration, boredom, and now with the glimmer of hope provided with the vaccine, we invite you to ponder on the state of our planet, to give science a chance, support climate research, and maybe even demand meaningful government action to address our home planet in crisis.
Climate change and pandemic have a lot in common, and if we have learned one thing from this past year, it is that a quick and efficient international cooperation and well-funded research that allows scientists to lead the solutions unfettered by partisan politics and profiteering companies, can likely find a way to provide solutions for problems of our times, such as climate change and to protect and create a place where we can truly belong.
As Brene Brown puts it in her book, The Gifts of Imperfection:
“Belonging is the innate human desire to be part of something larger than us. Because this yearning is so primal, we often try to acquire it by fitting in and by seeking approval, which are not only hollow substitutes for belonging, but often barriers to it. Because true belonging only happens when we present our authentic, imperfect selves to the world, our sense of belonging can never be greater than our level of self-acceptance.”
Perhaps, true belonging is what you carry inside your heart and not something that can be negotiated externally — It’s finding the sacredness in being a part of something, and today, on this Earth Day — may that something be taking care of and protecting a place we truly do belong — our planetary abode, the Earth!
Looking for ways to get involved, here’s one — NASA is hosting an Earth Day event — focused on how to live more sustainably on our home planet and to explore the connections between Earth’s atmosphere, water cycle, forests, fields, cities, ice caps, and climate — and if you know of others, please do spread the word — together we can find a way to celebrate, protect and belong in the place we call home!
Thank you for reading.
