Dear Earth, let me introduce myself

My name is Satya and I’m one of the teensy-weensy creatures living on your back. I’m told there are 8.7 million species of us here. I’m one of the 7.53 billion humans. Hello.

I’m writing to you because I want to say three things: thank you, sorry, and please. I want to thank you for the sunflower I can see right now through my office window – a happy yellow splash. I want to say sorry that it’s taken me so long to wake up to the damage we’re all doing. I want to ask if you would please help me to look after you better.

I’m writing to you because I want to learn how to listen to you more carefully. I drown out your whispers with busy-ness and machines and self-importance. I would like to lean in close again and run my fingers through your grass as the glossy blackbird serenades us.

I want us to talk late into the night, and I want you to tell me everything: the worst of it, and the best. I want to look, unflinching, at what we’ve all done, and use my sweet grief as fuel for the journey. I want to transmute regret into offerings and plant wildflowers. I want to grow communities. I want to shout unembarrassed from the rooftops about my love, so others will fall in love with you too all over again.

I am an ordinary, confused, deeply selfish being. My choices are still mostly driven by fear, even as I convince myself otherwise.

I trust that you are big enough and wise enough to see these things about me, and love me anyway. I trust that you will forgive us as a species, even as you are shrugging us off your back – if that’s what it comes to.

Until then, I will be your servant – appreciating you, apologising, and asking for help. I’m happy to be standing today on your solid brown lap, as you whizz through the universe with clouds in your hair. You are so beautiful!

Love, Satya <3