[00:01.01] like many, I love to look at the stars.
[00:04.75] I love the fact that ours is just one among many.
[00:07.73] What I love about astronomy, is that our constellations tell a story.
[00:12.12] Our constellations were born from mythology.
[00:14.36] Mythology was our first attempt to understand the world in which we live;
[00:18.60] we put a God in everything and those Gods would give us our reasons.
[00:22.76] Why is the sky blue? Who chose blue?
[00:26.73] Gods...
[00:29.15] How come men have nipples? It's the will of Gods
[00:33.44] Why dose this wine taste so good?
[00:36.24] There's a God in it! [hiccup]
[00:38.87] And for a while, there was not a single thing that the Gods could not explain.
[00:42.57] We believe that their anger gave us lightning; their despair gave us rain.
[00:46.68] We whispered our desires to them, believing that their charity would sustain us.
[00:51.93] Those Gods were just stories.
[00:55.00] But stories become a large part of how we learn.
[00:59.08] They burn lessons into our memories.
[01:01.26] They become a part of how we remember;
[01:03.75] we can remember almost everything, right down to that first unbearable bee sting,
[01:09.74] when we learned that this tiny blue marble we call the world has rules.
[01:15.47] Rule number one, don't **** with bees,
[01:20.36] an unforgettable lesson brought to you by your memories.
[01:24.55] I remember that I grew up loving mythology.
[01:27.79] I remember the story of the Titan Atlas, who the God of astronomy,
[01:31.86] the original global position system sending sailors safety home by telling them which constellations to keep starboard.
[01:38.18] He taught us about the stars,
[01:40.33] and in all this, while he held up ours, our pale blue dot.
[01:45.75] But Atlas is caught between two different tellings of his story.
[01:50.01] In the first, he leads a rebellion against Olympus
[01:52.27] and is then sentenced to hold the heavens on his shoulder for eternity.
[01:56.95] In the second story, he is chosen to be the guardian of the pillars that hold up the Earth and sky.
[02:04.81] I prefer the second story.
[02:07.46] It means that world is not a punishment, but rather, a responsibility.
[02:12.95] but how can just one be charged with such a burden? How can just one be responsible for all this?
[02:20.25] When I think of Atlas, I think of a single drop of rain,
[02:23.78] I think how unfair it would be to hold a single drop solely responsible for making the entire world clean again?
[02:30.74] I remember how my grandmother tried to explain our world to me; she told me a story.
[02:36.25] She said the ground and the sky --they love each other
[02:40.43] but they don't have arms, so rain, that's just how they hold one another.
[02:45.48] I began to see how the Earth and sky need each other.
[02:48.42] But I wondered about us.
[02:50.20] In this perfect design, where de we fit?
[02:52.56] Which piece of the puzzle are we?
[02:54.95] Like constellations, I began to see a connection between dots and numbered my thoughts
[02:59.42] and drew lines from one to the next.
[03:01.34] I began to see us in the context of a bigger picture,
[03:04.60] sharpening the blur slowly into focus.
[03:08.51] We are Atlas.
[03:10.84] I saw that this pale blue dot, this one world, is all we get.
[03:15.95] There will be no reset button, no new operating system, or downloadable upgrade,
[03:20.72] we will not be allowed to trade in our old world for a new one with climate control or better fuel efficiency
[03:25.56] we get one shot at this.
[03:27.45] Dismiss all reports of second chances, we get one.
[03:30.59] And yet we draw advances on our future, as if we won't one day be held accountable...
[03:34.93] we will.
[03:36.42] We are.
[03:38.40] The human race round toward a finish line, emblazoned with the words too far, and wonders,
[03:43.67] will we ever cross it?
[03:45.52] Have we already?
[03:47.44] We are faced with the seemingly impossible task.
[03:50.97] And it's okay to be afraid.
[03:52.92] Our dilemma stand before us like a mountain carved into a blockade --
[03:56.58] the sheer magnitude of our problem would be enough to dissuade anyone.
[04:01.78] How de we save the world?
[04:04.80] We lay in our beds, curled into question marks, wondering, what can we do? Where do we start?
[04:11.20] Is hope a glue crazy enough to hold us together while we're falling apart?
[04:15.70] The burden seems immense.
[04:17.78] But we can do this.
[04:19.15] We must take the martial arts approach to loving our planet --
[04:21.88] love as self defense.
[04:23.95] Forget about the cost -- there will be no other thing as worth saving as this!
[04:28.78] Nothing more important, nothing as precious;
[04:31.51] this is home.
[04:33.13] All of our stories start and end here.
[04:35.47] We are sheltered within an atmosphere that is given us every breath we will ever take;
[04:39.63] every monument we have ever make has come from the flesh of our planet.
[04:42.74] Water like blood, skin like soil, bone like granite.
[04:46.44] It id not a myth; there is no debate;
[04:48.75] fact are in, fact is, there's never been any question.
[04:52.65] We are facing crisis.
[04:56.12] We dismiss the truth, not because we can't accept it,
[04:59.49] but because having to commit ourselves to change is a scary prospect for anybody.
[05:04.58] The most alarming part of the statement:
[05:06.56] we are facing crisis, isn't the word crisis, it's the word "we" --
[05:11.48] because those two letters take responsibility away from one and
[05:15.23] rest it squarely on the shoulders of everybody.
[05:17.93] We are Atlas now.
[05:19.78] But our strength will come from finding a way to share in
[05:23.33] shouldering the responsibility of turning the impossible into somehow.
[05:28.24] Somehow, we will do this.
[05:30.22] we can do this.
[05:32.32] We can dismiss apathy; we can reject uncertainty;
[05:35.99] we can be the new chapter in our story;
[05:38.05] we will not see a change immediately.
[05:40.07] We must act in faith,
[05:41.59] as the hour hand grips the minute hand and the land on the eleventh hour,
[05:45.22] we must believe like the seed that change is possible to see.
[05:49.03] Never seize the flower...it grows knowing that it must become more than it was.
[05:54.91] It changes, because in growth, all of its potential can be unlocked.
[05:58.61] Change is like rain, it starts with a single drop.
[06:02.88] Just one, like our pale blue dot, caught in an endless waltz called gravity,
[06:09.27] we circle the sun wondering who, if anyone, left the light on.
[06:14.25] We are constellations draw upon the Earth; we are connected to one another;
[06:18.47] we are bound.
[06:19.85] We must behave as the arms that connect the ground to the sky.
[06:23.72] We must try to be more like the rain.
[06:26.04] Our stories may differ, our goal is the same, how do we save our pale blue dot?
[06:32.54] We act as the rain, realizing that each individual drop is as equal and important as any.
[06:39.24] We act as one.
[06:41.70] Now, we are many.