STARTING OVER

STARTING OVER: Think of the life you have lived until now as over, as a dead man. You went out this morning and stepped out and got hit by a bus. Roadkill! Game over! Light’s out! Good Night Vienna! Now, let us say by some miracle- it didn’t happen. So the rest of your life is a bonus and if you live according to Nature, love the hand that fate deals you and play it as your own, for what could be more fitting.

We have but this one life; we’re dealing within a limited time frame here: myself more than most. So we must make the best of our lives with the time that we do have left. We do not know how much time we have left. That is not for us to know, and we shouldn’t even think of it. To what avail? But what we can decide is what to do with the time that is given us. So we must make the best of our lives. When you’re falling, dive! Take that leap of faith!

There is still a lot in this world that is worth fighting for. And although we may not think that we can make a difference, we can begin sowing the seeds of love. This is what karma truly is. To reach out to someone who is staring or falling into the abyss and lift their spirits and pull them up and away from the darkness and resolve to be a warrior for peace.

Our task is to reach out to someone who is staring or falling into the abyss and to lift their spirits, and say, ‘Don’t let go, I’ve got you’ and pull them up and away from the darkness and resolve to be a warrior for peace. We do not exist for ourselves alone, and it is only when we are fully convinced of this fact that we begin to love ourselves properly and thus also love others.

‘Don’t let go. I’ve got you.’

‘We have the choice to use the gift of our life to make the world a better place- or not to bother. You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you. What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make. Each one of us matters, has a role to play, and makes a difference. Each one must take responsibility for their lives, and above all, show respect and love for living things around us, especially each other.’ Jane Goodall

We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us. If you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be.

‘When one door of happiness closes, another one opens. But usually we spend so much time looking at the closed door, we don’t see the one that has opened.’ Helen Keller

I look back in wonder at the pain and suffering of my own life, and how I somehow managed to endure; to break on through to the other side. And that I, or we, any of us, must be much more resilient than we give ourselves credit for. And I know I am not alone.

We all have had our traumas. And if I have gained some wisdom from living my life, and despite my existential loneliness, perhaps all of my struggles have not been in vain; that I am exactly where I am meant to be. Writing day and night to find joy, solace, clarity, kindness, or insights which may help someone navigate the storms of life. Most of us don’t share our scars, for fear of being judged. That’s a delusion. People will embrace you if you open up. And:

‘Those who matter don’t mind and those who mind don’t matter.’ Dr. Seuss

How strange that we should feel compelled to hide our wounds when we are all wounded. Community requires the ability to expose these wounds and weaknesses to our fellow creatures. It also requires the ability to be moved by the wounds of others… But even more important is the love that arises among us when we share, both ways, our woundedness.

A human being has so many skins inside, covering the depths of the heart. We know so many things, but we don’t know ourselves. Go into your own ground and learn to know yourself there. Truly it is in darkness that one finds the light, so when we are in sorrow, then the light is nearest to all of us.

Please don’t isolate yourself in these times. This, too, shall pass, and when the shadows go, the sun shall shine all the brighter. And if you can, albeit it only a smile, or any little gesture of kindness can change the world. And if you don’t believe that, I have enlisted the aid of someone who never gave up: she walked the walk.

VALUES: DO NOT FORGO YOUR PRINCIPLES FOR POWER AND PROFIT

It seems like an unreasonably high standard. It’s undeniable that many feats have only been made possible through compromise. Yet it seems that the pendulum has swung too far today: we forgo our principles in the name of power or for profit. Above we talked about values. We need to choose wisely a set of inviolable values that we should never compromise on, for money, reputation, or success. Don’t sell out.

And the pendulum has swung too far in the name of greed, power, and profit.

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From his book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey writes, ‘The values of fairness, of integrity and honesty, of human dignity; the principles of service to others, the striving of excellence and the principle of potential; that we can grow and develop more and more talents. These are natural laws that are woven into the fabric of every civilized society throughout history and comprise the roots of every family and institution that has endured and prospered.’

‘These values are part of every enduring religious tradition, as well as enduring social philosophies and ethical systems throughout the history of human civilization.’ Stephen Covey

‘By embracing values, defined early—they’re the subtitles of the chapters you’ve read: honesty, vulnerability, empathy, moving away from emotions, embracing your fear, believing in the good.’ Maria Ressa

‘In the day to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.’

‘If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing you will die a million deaths before they grieve you. Worship power, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay.’ David Foster Wallace

CARL JUNG: IF YOU’RE FALLING -DIVE

‘Life is a daring adventure or nothing.’ Helen Keller

Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them.

CARL JUNG: ‘The person who follows the crowd will usually go no further than the crowd. The person who walks alone is likely to find themselves in places no one has ever been before. Be glad that you can recognize it, for you will thus avoid becoming its victim.’ Jung

‘People strive toward reason only so that they can make rules for themselves. Life itself has no rules. That is its mystery and its unknown law. What you call knowledge is an attempt to impose something comprehensible on life. The person who walks alone is likely to find themselves in places no one has ever been before.’ Carl Jung

‘Your visions will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakens. I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become. How can I be substantial if I do not cast a shadow? I must have a dark side also If I am to be whole. We cannot change anything unless we accept it.’ Jung

In life we judge every single experience that we have. There’s an inner dialogue judging everything as ‘good or bad’ or ‘for or against’. Life is meant to be experienced, not judged. It comes from a deeper place inside that has not been taught the skills of living in the present moment. You can’t truly create experience, just as you can’t find meaning by looking for meaning.

‘As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light of meaning in the darkness of mere being. How can I be substantial if I do not cast a shadow? I must have a dark side also If I am to be whole. We cannot change anything unless we accept it. Where wisdom reigns, there is no conflict between thinking and feeling. ‘ Jung

Ultimately, happiness comes down to choosing between the discovery of becoming aware of your mental afflictions and the discomfort of being ruled by them.’ Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche

SHINE ON YOU CRAZY DIAMONDS

‘We dance for laughter, we dance for tears, we dance for madness, we dance for fears, we dance for hopes, we dance for screams, we are the dancers, we create the dreams. The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.’ Einstein

‘It would be possible to describe everything scientifically, but it would make no sense; it would be meaningless, as if you described a Beethoven symphony as a variation of wave pressure. You must be willing to give up what you are in order to become what you will be.’ Albert Einstein

Einstein had a sense of humor. I have a quote that says, ‘A question that sometimes drives me hazy, is it me, or is it everyone else that is crazy.’

‘Life is very short and anxious for those that regret the past, neglect the present and fear the future.’ Epictetus

Don’t explain your philosophy. Embody it. That’s why the philosophers warned us not to be satisfied with their learning, but to add practice and then training. For as time passes, we forget what we learned and end up doing the opposite of what we should.

‘We are made by love, with love to love. I call that love God. There are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the ground.’ Rumi

LIVING A LIFE ONLINE:

Have you ever stopped to think about why even though we are living in the most prosperous period in human history, so many people around us seem more distressed and depressed than ever; why in an era where we have instant access to any information, connection with people world-wide and opportunities our ancestors never dreamt of there is still this growing sense of emptiness: that something fundamental is missing.

Perhaps you feel this yourself, that silent restlessness that emerges when digital distractions stop for a moment and you wonder if you are truly living or just existing on autopilot. You’re not alone in this experience and what you’re feeling might be the first sign of something much larger approaching. Imagine, we with all of our technology and abundance have almost completely lost our place in the world; an absence of any sense of meaning to our lives.

The experience of young adults, of having access to information more than any emperor in history, can instantly communicate with people in distant continents and have career opportunities that did not exist a decade ago. Imagine, we with all of our technology and abundance have almost completely lost our place in the world; an absence of any sense of meaning to our lives.

But every morning, they need to construct their identity from scratch, decide who to believe, decide who to hate, among thousands of digital influences, hundreds of career options that might become obsolete before they graduate. They might, due to medical advances, live to be ninety, but wonder if their own existence actually causes them to suffer.

Every day, millions lineup to drink from the good fountain of confirmation bias, and are led further and further down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories, so far down that there’s no coming back. Everybody lives a ‘virtual’ life of which they are the epicenter, and everyone gets their unique tailor- made algorithmic conception of what constitutes reality, what and who to believe, who to hate, and who or what you are. It determines your identity.

‘The biggest problem facing the world today is not people dying on the streets of Calcutta, and not inflation, but spiritual deprivation; this feeling of emptiness associated with feeling separate from God, from all our sisters and brothers here on planet earth. Loneliness is like the leprosy of the West.’ Mother Teresa

‘We may now be at an inflection point, a moment when we have to decide how to shape surveillance technology, artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, voice-or face-recognition systems, and other emerging technologies so that their inventors and their users remain accountable to democratic laws, as well as to principles of human rights and standards of transparency. ‘ Appelbaum

‘We have already failed to regulate social media, with negative consequences for politics around the world. Failure to regulate AI before it distorts political conversations, just to take one obvious example, could have a catastrophic impact over time.’ Anne Appelbaum

TRUTH WHAT IS TRUTH: My definition of truth is quite simple, starting with the assumption that the more I read, the more I learn, and the less I know.

For me, truth is the recognition of my lack of knowledge. Truth is admitting that there is no one truth, and that everything is a Great Mystery. Truth for me is that we are all interconnected and that the single most important thing in this brief existence is to love. I define truth as to stop looking for answers and get lost in the quagmire of complicated conceptions. For me, I only know of one truth: that everyone deserves to be loved.

‘I live with three treasures, with compassion, moderation and humility in all of my dealings with others. Because I know that I do not know, I will be guided to find my own way. I do not put myself above others or see myself as superior to anyone. I am like the great ocean where all streams flow to me because I stay low and thus, I am a servant to all.’ Lao Tzu

Some of us continue to search for a deeper truth. The path to ultimate reality takes hard work and practice. If we value truth and reality, we chip away at falsehoods, both large and subtle in our lives. This also applies to living a virtuous life; do not distinguish between small and large. We all know, in our hearts, what is right and what is wrong

LIVING IN A WORLD THAT WANTS TO KILL YOUR SPIRIT: It is hard, it’s so very, very hard to protect your spirit in a world trying to kill it. In a world where anything can be bought and sold, Native American traditions provide an alternative to ecological exhaustion. We now live in a world where manipulation and deceit bombards us with so many different versions of reality, that we become nihilistic and stop looking for answers. If there is no truth, and no respect, civility, morality or compassion it’s game over.

We must protect ourselves against the virus of Christian Nationalism. Buddhist meditation provides an alternative to the abuse of our attention. In a world where everything is bought and sold, especially your soul, Native American traditions provide an alternative to ecological exhaustion

‘The logic of worldly success rests on a fallacy: the strange error that our perfection depends on the thoughts and opinions and applause of other people! A weird life is, indeed, to be living always in somebody else’s imagination, as if that were the only place in which one could at last become real!’ Thomas Merton

That millions of people share the same forms of mental pathology does not make these people sane. It is naively assumed that the fact that the majority of people share certain ideas and feelings proves the validity of these ideas and feelings. Nothing could be further from the truth. Consensual validation as such has no bearing on reason or mental health.

We are fed messages of hatred, fear, and anger, because the Social Media Moguls have done their research well: they keep you more engaged, and that translates into cold hard cash.

‘We are made by love, with love to love. I call that love God. There are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the ground.’ Rumi

‘A person who has not been completely alienated, who has remained sensitive and able to feel, who has not lost the sense of dignity, who is not yet ‘for sale’, who can still suffer over the suffering of others, who has not acquired fully the having mode of existence.

‘Briefly, a person who has remained a person and not become a thing - cannot help feeling lonely, powerless, isolated in present-day society. He cannot help doubting himself and his own convictions, if not his sanity. He cannot help suffering, even though he can experience moments of joy and clarity that are absent in the life of his ‘normal’ contemporaries. ‘ Fromm

‘Not rarely will he suffer from neurosis that results from the situation of a sane man living in an insane society, rather than that of the more conventional neurosis of a sick man trying to adapt himself to a sick society.’ Erich Fromm

BECOME SO ABSOLUTELY FREE THAT YOUR EXISTENCE IS A REBELLION.

‘The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion. Basically, at the very bottom of life, which seduces us all there is only absurdity and more absurdity. And maybe that is what gives us our joy for living, because the only thing that can defeat absurdity is lucidity.’ Albert Camus

‘We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.’ George Orwell

The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend. Fortunately, some are born with spiritual immune systems that sooner or later give rejection to the illusory worldview grafted upon them from birth through social conditioning. They begin sensing that something is amiss and start looking for answers.

‘If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious. Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.’ Orwell

‘Is the system going to flatten you out and deny you your humanity, or are you going to be able to make use of the system for the attainment of human purposes? Life is meaningless. You bring meaning to your life.’ Campbell

One way or another, we all have to find what best fosters the flowering of our humanity in this contemporary life, and dedicate ourselves to it. The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are. It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.’ Joseph Campbell

“Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing.’ George Orwell

And if your spirit carries within it the thorn that is heavier than lead- if it’s all you can do to keep on trudging-there is still somewhere deep within you a beast shouting that the earth is exactly what it wanted-each pond with its blazing lilies is a prayer heard and answered lavishly, each morning. Whether or not, you have ever dared to be happy, whether or not, you have ever decided to pray. Inside everyone is a great shout of joy waiting to be born.

‘Being in a minority, even in a minority of one, did not make you mad. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad. Perhaps a lunatic was simply a minority of one. Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.’ George Orwell

I am a minority of one. Revolution never won, it’s just another type of gun, to do again what they have done.

“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.” Orwell : Animal Farm

‘In the darkest winter of my soul, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer. And that makes me happy, for it tells me that no matter how much the world pushes against me and attempts to turn me into everyone else, within me, there’s something stronger- something better, pushing right back.’ Albert Camus

‘All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. ‘ George Orwell

“The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever.” Orwell

‘Are you prepared to live in this world with its harsh need to change you? Can you look back with firm eyes saying ‘This is where I make a stand.’ David Whyte

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‘How can one person bring sanity to the planet.’ we ask ourselves. But every day we are exposed to corruption, the hatred of ‘others’; and the greed and the gleeful cruelty of world leaders. We can easily succumb to despair and nihilism. Of course, this is exactly what the rich and powerful, and the minstrel’s gallery of crackpots and fools that serve them want us to feel.

MARCEL PROUST: HAPPINESS AND GRIEF

‘My destination is no longer a place, rather a new way of seeing. Happiness is beneficial for the body, but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind. We don’t receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us. My destination is no longer a place, rather a new way of seeing. We are healed of suffering only by experiencing it to the fullest.’ Marcel Proust

‘The true journey of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having fresh eyes.’ Marcel Proust

‘If a little dreaming is dangerous, the cure for it is not to dream less, but to dream more, to dream all the time. The true paradises are the paradises that we have lost. It comes so soon, the moment when there is nothing left to wait for. ‘ Marcel Proust

MARCEL PROUST: GRIEF

People do not die for us immediately, but remain bathed in a sort of aura of life which bears no relation to true immortality but through which they continue to occupy our thoughts in the same way as when they were alive. It is as though they were traveling abroad.’ Marcel Proust

It took me a while to understand and relate to Proust’s articulation of grief. I have lost so many people in my life, and I was with both my parents when they passed. Recently my first cousin John, the brother I never had with his gigantic heart died from cancer. I still can’t wrap my head around and I try to bury it, And I never did reconcile or acknowledge that pain. Instead I tried to bury that grief. But it might explain why I am always alone. All I can do is to allow my consciousness to experience that grief.

‘When you are used to this horrible thing that they will forever be cast into the past, then you will gently feel her revive, returning to take her place, her entire place, beside you.’ Marcel Proust

“Now there is one thing I can tell you: you will enjoy certain pleasures you would not fathom now. When you still had your mother you often thought of the days when you would have her no longer. Now you will often think of days past when you had her. When you are used to this horrible thing that they will forever be cast into the past, then you will gently feel her revive, returning to take her place, her entire place, beside you.

Everyday, we get another shot at life, another shot of love and compassion, another shot at trying to make a difference. We can change. You can change yourself, day by day. It is possible to produce thoughts, speech, and action of compassion, understanding and forgiveness. There is cause for hope, for joy.

I do not accept any absolute formulas for living. No preconceived code can see ahead to everything that can happen in a person’s life. As we live, we grow and our beliefs change. They must change. So I think we should live with this constant discovery. We should be open to this adventure in heightened awareness of living. We should stake our whole existence on our willingness to explore and experience.

The real opposition is that between the ego-bound man, whose existence is structured by the principle of having, and the free man, who has overcome his egocentricity. We must deliberately challenge the validity of what we have been previously taught and hold near and dear to our hearts. The path to wholeness lies through questioning everything.

Sit down before the fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing. I have only begun to learn content and peace of mind since I have resolved all risks to do this.

‘THE ENEMY WITHIN: ‘THE OTHER’: ‘To shut out the person and refuse to consider them as a person, and an ‘other self’ we resort to the impersonal ‘law’ and to abstract ‘nature’; that is to say, we block off the reality of the other, we cut the intercommunication of our nature and we consider only our own nature, with its ‘rights’, its claims and demands. We justify the evil we do to our brother or sister, because they are no longer a person, they are merely an adversary, an accused.’

‘To restore communication, to see our oneness of nature with him, and to respect his personal rights and his integrity; his worthiness of love, we have to see ourselves as similarly accused along with him- and needing, along with him, the ineffable gift of grace and mercy to be saved. ‘Then, instead of pushing him down, trying to climb out by using his head as a stepping stone, we help ourselves, we help ourselves rise by helping him to rise.

For when we extend our hand to the enemy who is sinking in the abyss, God reaches out to both of us, for it is He, after all, who extends our hand to the enemy.’ Thomas Merton

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IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE LIKE THIS: STEPHEN HAWKING

‘For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk and we learned to listen. Speech has allowed the communication of ideas, enabling human beings to work together to build the impossible. ‘ Stephen Hawking

‘Mankind’s greatest achievements have come about by talking, and its greatest failures by not talking. It doesn’t have to be like this. Our greatest hopes could become reality in the future. With the technology at our disposal, the possibilities are unbounded. All we need to do is make sure we keep talking.’ Hawking

Our greatest failures occur when we stop talking to one another, but truth be told, we are incapable of listening to one another. We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can make for us, which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world.

‘The lives that you admire, the attitudes that seem noble to you, have not been shaped by a paterfamilias or a schoolmaster, they have sprung from very different beginnings, having been influenced by evil or commonplace that prevailed around them. They represent a struggle and a victory.’ Marcel Proust

PLATO’S REPUBLIC : DON’T CONFUSE ME WITH FACTS :)

‘I’m trying to think, don’t confuse me with facts. Ignorance is the root and stem of every evil. Those who tell the stories rule society. You should not honor men more than the truth. Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge. I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing. Never discourage anyone...who continually makes progress, no matter how slow.’ Plato: The Republic

‘The measure of a man is what he does with power. Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws. In politics we presume that everyone who knows how to get votes knows how to administer a city or a state. When we are ill... we do not ask for the handsomest physician, or the most eloquent one. One of the penalties of refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.’ Plato

‘ I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing. Never discourage anyone...who continually makes progress, no matter how slow.’ Plato: The Republic

CARL SAGAN: ‘I have a foreboding of an America in my children or grandchildren’s time, when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues.’ Carl Sagan

‘When awesome technologies are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues, surely we are lost. ‘Sagan

When the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when clutching our crystals, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness. ‘ Carl Sagan

‘Unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true. We know what the truth is, it’s simply boring. The truth is boring and if you were to search for the truth, you’ll need to do some work to find it. Fiction is inexpensive and easy to produce, there is no fact-checking on social media, no dispelling of conspiracy technologies.

‘The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow-decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations of pseudoscience and conspiracy theories, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance! ‘ Carl Sagan

TO EMBRACE TRUTH RATHER THAN WHAT FEELS GOOD

‘It pays to keep an open mind, but not so open your brains fall out. The universe is a pretty big place. If it’s just us, it seems like an awful waste of space. We can judge our progress by the courage of our questions and depth of our answers, our willingness to embrace what is true rather than what feels good.’ Carl Sagan

‘But even if you figure out the mathematics of it and write it in a language that the astrophysicists understand- math- that does nothing to dispel the mystery of it all. All life is a miracle. Mother Nature is a miracle!

We are the Mystery looking at Itself. And that is no small thing. The heartbreaking part of it all, is that we use up all our resources and energy into waging war against each other, rather than ending world poverty and destroying our dying interconnected ecosystems. We are destroying our world so the rich can get richer.’

Homo Sapiens as a species is an enigma. We are capable of such beautiful dreams and aspirations and such horrible nightmares. I feel so lost, so cut off, so alone, only really I’m not. You see, in all of our searching, the only thing that makes the emptiness bearable, is each other.

Our posture, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.’ Carl Sagan

‘The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.’ Carl Sagan

‘There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known. Sagan

‘Everything is set for us to win this future. We have a plan. We know what to do. There is a path to sustainability. It is a path that could lead to a better future for all life on Earth. We must let our politicians and business leaders know that we understand this, that this vision for the future is not just something we need, it is something, above all, that we want.’ David Attenborough

Every one of us, in the cosmic perspective, is precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred-billion galaxies, you will not find another.’ Carl Sagan

‘I find it far more awesome, wonderful, that creation; our appearance in the world; should be the culmination, or at least one of the latest products of three billion years of organic evolution, than a kind of country trick, taking a rib out of a man’s side in a trance.’ Attenborough

‘Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s it. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived their lives. The aggregate of our joy and our sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager lived on this planet.’ Sagan

‘We are at a unique stage in our history. Never before have we had such an awareness of what we are doing to the planet, and never before have we had the power to do something about that. Surely we all have a responsibility to care for our Blue Planet. The future of humanity and indeed, all life on earth, now depends on us.’ David Attenborough

‘Every hero and every coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and every peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every ‘superstar;, every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there- on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.’ Sagan

‘We ourselves (one single species) have taken over vast tracts of the habitable surface of the planet. Surely, we should allow those other creatures we share the planet with to retain some part of their ancient heritage.’ David Attenborough

‘The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelty visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstanding seems, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.’ Sagan

Please don’t isolate yourself in these times. This, too, shall pass, and when the shadows go, the sun shall shine all the brighter. And if you can, albeit it only a smile, or any little gesture of kindness can change the world. And if you don’t believe that, I have enlisted the aid of someone who never gave up: she walked the walk.

‘We have the choice to use the gift of our life to make the world a better place- or not to bother. You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you. What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make. Each one of us matters, has a role to play, and makes a difference. Each one must take responsibility for their lives, and above all, show respect and love for living things around us, especially each other.’ Jane Goodall