Dear Earth, life is closer than death.

On Tuesday evening we heard a cat wailing in the corridor. By the time I reached our cat Tsuki, her soul had slipped quietly out of her body.

“Mara follows every step.” This is a fragment of a Buddhist text we recite in the mornings, and it reminds us that death and destruction is always closer than we can imagine. Tsuki was only 8 years old, and before her death she was apparently healthy and enjoying her usual activities – happily dribbling on my lap while I typed at this computer, watching the world from the blue bench outside, crawling into the cosy caves under our duvet at night.

Darling Earth, I don’t have to tell you about death. Death offers us building materials for the next generation. Without death, there would be no room for fresh life. Death intensifies creativity, joy, energy, passion and compassion.

Sometimes we can ward death off for a good while. We give our twenty year old cat his various medications every day – without them he’d have left us four years ago.

Us humans had a natural life-span at home on you too, dear Earth, before you became inhospitable to us. It was a very very long time. We’ve messed that up. We’ve smoked too much carbon and eaten too many rainforests and excreted too much plastic.

We might be able to save the human race, and we might not. Either way, we can offer you our medications. We can plant trees and stop runways being built and rise up against the companies doing the most raping and pillaging. We can keep our eyes open to the truth, and share it. We can sit outside Parliament and pray through the cold nights. We can come together. We can act.

We can also remember to enjoy soft warm purring cats while they are here. We can linger with shy purple hellebores and brassy daffodils. We can savour the taste of cherry chocolate, and breathe in the fragrant steam rising from our cup of tea.

Death is close, and life is closer.

Love, Satya <3

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Gratitude for the photo by Edgar Perez on Unsplash