Earth is crying to us with a broken heart.

Starting in summer 2021, I started feeling like something was ‘off’, both within myself and in the world. I started coming to terms with the absurdity of life and, especially, the human condition.

The pandemic instilled a deep sense of loneliness in me — and I recognize that this loneliness has been felt by many/all. But I started…feeling something, I guess. Feeling a loneliness that I couldn’t make sense of. And I started coming to terms with two really harsh realities:

Humans are alone; and humans made the ultimate sacrifice.

The pain of being (dis)connected

I started understanding — truly understanding — that we don’t (yet) have another species on our level. I don’t believe that we are gods. But we are…alone, in terms of our levels of consciousness. And I think that hurts us, not being able to communicate with other life forms in the ways that we do with one another.

But life communicates with life all around us, in ways that we seem desperate to understand.

We are surrounded by Nature and yet so deeply disconnected from it. And I think that makes us sad, feeling this cognitive dissonance of both belonging and not in Nature.

I started asking: Why not them? Why us?

The blessing and the curse of high-level consciousness

I think it is undeniable that our ancestors, at some point, sacrificed their deeply rooted connections with Nature and the Earth so as to explore the freedom of emerging consciousness.

I think it had to happen. I think it must have been extremely painful, especially in the beginning. Maybe that is why we are the only ones to have gotten this far. Maybe it’s too hard, in general. But just maybe…

I think that our consciousness couldn’t have evolved to where it is now without disconnecting from Nature.

I think we needed great degrees of freedom to explore and to create. It is truly a mystery. And we’ve truly risen to such great potential.

But, after millions of years, that longing for our roots — to be connected with our Home like every other organism gets to enjoy — remains within us all. I think that longing is at the heart of human suffering, whether we recognize it or not.

And I started to question our trajectory.

The choice is ours

We clearly have the opportunity to disconnect from Nature even further. We could. But I started…feeling something, deep within, a feeling that I couldn’t shake. Something was telling me to pay attention. I just kept… feeling, I don’t know how else to describe it, something saying, ‘It’s time.’

It’s taken me so long to piece together what it could possibly be ‘time’ for. I don’t think it’s to disconnect. I think it’s to reconnect: with ourselves, with each other, with Earth.

And I think others feel it, too. Feel something deep within us begging for us to come back. To understand ourselves. To exist in harmony with each other and all others. To ameliorate the damage that we have done to Earth. To protect everything — including ourselves — and take responsibility.

I started asking myself, ‘What have we done?’ To lose all sight of what we really are, beings from Earth and connected to all life. To ascend ourselves to the status of ‘demigods’ and dominate the only planet known to harbor life. To make everything about us, consequences be damned.

We are surrounded by omens

Setting aside the social and political threats, I can’t shake this feeling that we are being warned — critically — that we have to act now. We are running out of time to restore the planet to a healthier balance. That ‘it’s time’ to find the humility to accept what we’ve done and reconnect with Earth by using all the skills and knowledge that we have acquired.

As fun as exploring the cosmos is, I feel this deep sense of pain from Earth and our fellow creatures. It’s like a projection of generational guilt, as if life is more conscious and more aware than we tend to give credit for.

It’s almost like the life around us knows that something is wrong — that they can’t adapt fast enough, that they’re dying — that we’re dying.

Pulling out of the matrix

Anthropogenic climate change is truly horrible. I think it’s the worst thing we’ve ever done to the planet. We can see the panic in other animals, desperate to escape to other ecosystems. I don’t know if they understand how we — one species out of millions — have done this to ourselves and to them. But I think they know that something is very, very wrong. And not a single one of them can communicate with us to help us figure this out. We have to do it.

I think that many (most?) humans have cast aside their oneness with Nature.

I think that many humans live so deeply in an ‘alternate reality’ inside their minds, so deeply asleep from the reality that is our story.

Taking responsibility

We still have time. We have so much potential. But there is no denying it: the world is changing — rapidly. Too quickly for evolution to let species adapt in time.

She is hurting — we are all hurting. And I think She/Earth/Nature has been desperately calling to us with a broken heart.

I can’t help but think of that much-quoted line by the Christians, but instead of it being from a man to his alleged father, it is Earth asking her children, who were gifted such beauty with consciousness, why she and all our siblings have been forsaken.

‘Have you forgotten me?’ she seems to be calling. Begging for us to listen. To save her. To save ourselves. To realize that something strange is happening. That it’s time to reconnect. To fix our mistakes. To create a better future for us all.

We are all connected. We are all in this together. And life itself is calling on us to pay attention.

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(originally published on Medium)