Earth - our planet, our world, our home -
was once unlike what it is now:
it was barren, it was dry, it was lifeless;
however, then celestial snowballs
fell from above with the gift of frozen water
that eventually melted and gave rise to
the first droplets of water that would
ultimately lead to the first oceans,
and over billions of years our world
slowly became the oasis of life that it is today.

Earth was once like so many of the other planets
that still orbit around their stars
all across the galaxy and the universe -
just waiting for that spark of energy
and outside inspiration that is sometimes needed
to transform something, somewhere,
into a version of itself that it could not have been
had fate not decided to lend a divine hand
and alter the way of life of an entire world
in more ways than could ever be known.

Earth has always been a testbed
and a natural laboratory for the many
and varied possibilities of life
that may develop upon a planet
if the conditions are just right,
and if a species does not choose
the road of mutual self-annihilation
instead of the road of mutual cooperation.

Earth has always been in a state of constant of change
since birth of the universe –
when its individual components
were still disparate from one another,
and before the coalescence of gas and energy
that eventually ignited and became the star
at the centre of our solar system
that we call The Sun,
and before the gravity of the brightest light in our sky
influenced its surroundings in such a way
that spheres of gas and rock grew over time -
and over the course of time that
the universe has existed and has continued to expand
beyond the biggest of bangs there has ever been,
nothing has happened that could ever have been predicted:
including life itself, because for there to be life
there must also be chance,
there must be the roll of a cosmic dice,
there must be things both seen and unseen,
and there must be chemistry and experimentation.

Earth has no master, no ruler, nothing and no one
who can claim it as their own,
because Earth is a living organism in its own right
as well as a welcome habitat for those who respect it
as well as see and understand
that it is more than a spinning ball of rock -
because Earth has a history
and still has a story to tell about itself
from a time before life began upon it.

Earth has naturally been visited
by other galactic neighbours of ours,
and perhaps humanity is the end result of
someone or something who wanted to see
what might happen to a world
if a species were given the building blocks
to slow evolve and develop themselves
and their environment in such a way that one day,
when their creator returned to see what they did
with the epic gift of life that they were given,
they might have an idea and an answer
to the question of meaning that drives
so many to believe in things
and to do things that could not have been
envisioned by those who were there
in the beginning.

Earth has harboured many secrets since its formation,
and since the inception of mankind
Earth and humanity have lived
in harmony with each other, for the most part;
however people have done harm
as well as good to our world over the centuries,
and I believe that we have only
just scratched the surface of what we need to do
and who we as a partner to our planet need to be
in order for us to continue to live and thrive
as we have been for so long now –
and even though our connection
and our integration with the technology
that we have developed has gotten closer,
and will no doubt continue to,
over time there will always be
those of us who will always believe
and will always know that
there will never be a more symbiotic relationship
between anything and anyone
than humanities unbreakable tether to Earth
and Earth’s unending privilege to be
where life began,
where life was given everything
it could ever want
or need to become anything,
and where, no matter what,
life will always finds a way.