A Sense of The Planet

 

If I become more whole; if I sense, I feel, I think together; eventually I become a whole creature, not a series of fragments which collide with one another all day long.

Then perhaps I begin to organically see that I'm a creature on a planet. 

Not just any planet; this is a planet engaged in a vast experiment with chemistry, creating extraordinary and exotic compounds and recombining them in trillions of ways in every second. 

This planet is a living thing; and I am a part of it. Every instant of my life is an act of chemical engagement that integrates me completely with the life of the planet itself.

This is a different sense of Being than the one that sentimentalizes nature and thinks about the poor planet and the way we are destroying it — which is unfortunately quite true. Our attitudes towards the planet when we are partial are attitudes of the body, the intellect, the emotions, all separated and not infrequently in conflict with one another. We mistake each one of them for a “real” sense of what it means to be on the planet. 

None of these is a real sense of what this means. Each one inflects our perception of conditions according to its own perspective, which is incompletely formed.

If I have a true sense, a real sense, of my whole Being, the question that immediately arises is one of my responsibility to this planet, how I participate in its whole presence in any given moment. These moments are alive and filled with a truth that transcends me as an individual: I have a duty towards the planet that begins within myself and must be upheld honorably and with a great attention. 

If I have this sense, already, everything about my attitude to the planet is quite different. I have legs; I don't crawl to understanding like some lower animal, but walk to it upright and with a sense of wonder. 

This is why men became vertical creatures walking on two legs; and yet we have forgotten it.

We need to overcome the romance of the planet and its beauty and attend to the reality of the planet and our participation  in its life.

May you be well within today.

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.