I was looking back at past ideas for blog posts and came across these two:

We get too caught up in our human bubble. We are part of a larger ecosystem, the Earth, and our focus and awareness needs to expand to that in order to truly change the world and solve our problems
We are the only known planet with oxygen that can support us. There may be raw materials on Mars or other planets but we’re not there yet. We need to take care of this planet

I think I wrote both these ideas down around the time I watched the first few episodes of One Strange Rock, a 2018 National Geographic miniseries hosted by Will Smith. It features interviews with several different NASA astronauts, who describe their experiences aboard the International Space Station and on spacewalks. Their expression of Earth's beauty deeply moved me. I've been incredibly fortunate to travel across the world, but I've never left it like they have. Viewing the Earth from space is supposed to completely change your worldview and permanently shift your paradigm of life. There have been 656 people who have reached space in the history of our species. You can find anecdotes online of their experiences, but they all seem to align on one thing: the Earth is a precious entity floating in the void of space, and there are no distinctions between 'parts' of it from above. It is all one. It is a harbor for all known life, including humanity. And as far as we know, it is the only possible harbor that exists.

One of the astronauts talked about that in the NatGeo documentary. He reminisced about a spacewalk, and how he had to let go of the ISS (while tied to it with a rope), and how exhilarating it was--he was relinquishing all control, and had to trust in the rope attached to the space station. It was the most alone and isolated he had ever felt. And he talked about how clear it is up in space that there is no oxygen. In fact, there is no oxygen anywhere in the universe--as far as we know--except one place: Earth. Our planet is the only one that contains the necessary environment for us to survive. It's surreal when you actually think about it. And how do we take care of this one precious planet we inhabit?

It really does get down to the hard science of it all: the physics, the chemistry, the biology of what we are and where we exist in the void. As Carl Sagan poetically said in his pale blue dot reflections, every human that has ever existed, regardless of status or birth year, has lived out their existence on this blue planet. We all share that, as does every other single living thing we know of. From this vantage point, it's clear it's time to end our squabbles. That what truly matters is our shared experience of this miracle that is life. And that we are a part of this miracle, with billions of other organisms, on this utterly unique planet; we are not thee miracle. If we recognize that, and raise our global consciousness, we can unite, and inspire each other. Understanding we share this one big beautiful amazing world, we can start to change it.