Dear Mother Earth,
I've always found it strange that we always personify you. That we always talk about how you're in perfect harmony. You're not a you, though. You're not in perfect balance. You're an uncountable number of parts constantly shifting. You're precarious as they come--a shaky relationship between everything. I know someone who likes to say that anything more complicated than hydrogen is a statistical anomaly. I've also heard someone else say that the chances of life as complex as us forming is about the same as a tornado assembling a working plane out of a pile of parts. Lucky us, and too bad the chances at another shot are slim if this one doesn't work out.
Whenever I think about that I just marvel about how much we're blowing it. Patterns in you shift everyday, there have been huge events, cataclysm that have barely registered in this infinite relationship. We're doing such a bad job of existing we're managing to mess up one of the most haphazard systems out there. It would be impressive if it wasn't so terrifying.
When I was younger I half expected to have my adult life take place in a barren wasteland. But that would be too easy. A looming apocalypse would actually rally people, but this is slow, insidious. Instead of that, in twenty or thirty years I probably won't be able to go outside for ten minutes without SPF 100. We'll live our lives with the blinds closed, hiding from what gives us life. You'll turn on us, that shaky relationship will dissolve, become a series of tiny conflicts that will swallow us up.
So I try. I do all the things I'm supposed to: efficient car (soon to be no car), fluorescents, less water, canvas shopping bags, everything I can think of. I do it because I like the blinds open, I like the feel of grass on my feet. I do it because the other choice is destruction, probably not for me but for someone down the road. There are millions of people who almost every day quietly tell themselves it isn't too late and I try to be one of them.
Sifu Robertson
