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like many, I love to look at the stars. |
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I love the fact that ours is just one among many. |
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What I love about astronomy, is that our constellations tell a story. |
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Our constellations were born from mythology. |
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Mythology was our first attempt to understand the world in which we live; |
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we put a God in everything and those Gods would give us our reasons. |
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Why is the sky blue? Who chose blue? |
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Gods... |
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How come men have nipples? It's the will of Gods |
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Why dose this wine taste so good? |
| [00:36.24] There's a God in it! [hiccup] |
|
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And for a while, there was not a single thing that the Gods could not explain. |
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We believe that their anger gave us lightning; their despair gave us rain. |
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We whispered our desires to them, believing that their charity would sustain us. |
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Those Gods were just stories. |
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But stories become a large part of how we learn. |
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They burn lessons into our memories. |
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They become a part of how we remember; |
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we can remember almost everything, right down to that first unbearable bee sting, |
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when we learned that this tiny blue marble we call the world has rules. |
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Rule number one, don't **** with bees, |
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an unforgettable lesson brought to you by your memories. |
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I remember that I grew up loving mythology. |
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I remember the story of the Titan Atlas, who the God of astronomy, |
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the original global position system sending sailors safety home by telling them which constellations to keep starboard. |
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He taught us about the stars, |
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and in all this, while he held up ours, our pale blue dot. |
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But Atlas is caught between two different tellings of his story. |
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In the first, he leads a rebellion against Olympus |
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and is then sentenced to hold the heavens on his shoulder for eternity. |
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In the second story, he is chosen to be the guardian of the pillars that hold up the Earth and sky. |
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I prefer the second story. |
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It means that world is not a punishment, but rather, a responsibility. |
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but how can just one be charged with such a burden? How can just one be responsible for all this? |
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When I think of Atlas, I think of a single drop of rain, |
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I think how unfair it would be to hold a single drop solely responsible for making the entire world clean again? |
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I remember how my grandmother tried to explain our world to me; she told me a story. |
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She said the ground and the sky --they love each other |
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but they don't have arms, so rain, that's just how they hold one another. |
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I began to see how the Earth and sky need each other. |
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But I wondered about us. |
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In this perfect design, where de we fit? |
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Which piece of the puzzle are we? |
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Like constellations, I began to see a connection between dots and numbered my thoughts |
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and drew lines from one to the next. |
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I began to see us in the context of a bigger picture, |
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sharpening the blur slowly into focus. |
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We are Atlas. |
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I saw that this pale blue dot, this one world, is all we get. |
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There will be no reset button, no new operating system, or downloadable upgrade, |
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we will not be allowed to trade in our old world for a new one with climate control or better fuel efficiency |
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we get one shot at this. |
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Dismiss all reports of second chances, we get one. |
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And yet we draw advances on our future, as if we won't one day be held accountable... |
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we will. |
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We are. |
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The human race round toward a finish line, emblazoned with the words too far, and wonders, |
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will we ever cross it? |
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Have we already? |
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We are faced with the seemingly impossible task. |
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And it's okay to be afraid. |
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Our dilemma stand before us like a mountain carved into a blockade -- |
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the sheer magnitude of our problem would be enough to dissuade anyone. |
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How de we save the world? |
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We lay in our beds, curled into question marks, wondering, what can we do? Where do we start? |
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Is hope a glue crazy enough to hold us together while we're falling apart? |
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The burden seems immense. |
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But we can do this. |
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We must take the martial arts approach to loving our planet -- |
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love as self defense. |
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Forget about the cost -- there will be no other thing as worth saving as this! |
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Nothing more important, nothing as precious; |
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this is home. |
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All of our stories start and end here. |
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We are sheltered within an atmosphere that is given us every breath we will ever take; |
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every monument we have ever make has come from the flesh of our planet. |
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Water like blood, skin like soil, bone like granite. |
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It id not a myth; there is no debate; |
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fact are in, fact is, there's never been any question. |
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We are facing crisis. |
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We dismiss the truth, not because we can't accept it, |
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but because having to commit ourselves to change is a scary prospect for anybody. |
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The most alarming part of the statement: |
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we are facing crisis, isn't the word crisis, it's the word "we" -- |
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because those two letters take responsibility away from one and |
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rest it squarely on the shoulders of everybody. |
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We are Atlas now. |
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But our strength will come from finding a way to share in |
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shouldering the responsibility of turning the impossible into somehow. |
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Somehow, we will do this. |
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we can do this. |
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We can dismiss apathy; we can reject uncertainty; |
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we can be the new chapter in our story; |
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we will not see a change immediately. |
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We must act in faith, |
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as the hour hand grips the minute hand and the land on the eleventh hour, |
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we must believe like the seed that change is possible to see. |
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Never seize the flower...it grows knowing that it must become more than it was. |
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It changes, because in growth, all of its potential can be unlocked. |
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Change is like rain, it starts with a single drop. |
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Just one, like our pale blue dot, caught in an endless waltz called gravity, |
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we circle the sun wondering who, if anyone, left the light on. |
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We are constellations draw upon the Earth; we are connected to one another; |
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we are bound. |
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We must behave as the arms that connect the ground to the sky. |
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We must try to be more like the rain. |
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Our stories may differ, our goal is the same, how do we save our pale blue dot? |
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We act as the rain, realizing that each individual drop is as equal and important as any. |
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We act as one. |
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Now, we are many. |
