Dear Earth, it’s impossible.

All year I have been avoiding plastic in the supermarkets. Last week I chose the mushrooms sweating in their clingfilmed plastic coffin, because I was afraid. I was afraid of catching the coughing virus.

Meanwhile, on a Pacific island, albatross chicks are being fed lighters, bottle tops, and biros by their mothers. This cargo fills their stomachs and stops them from lifting off, so they die where they were born, their soft bodies melting back into the ground and leaving a mound of our plastic shame.

Dear Earth, human beings are suffering right now across the globe. How can we ask the man who isn’t allowed to visit his dying grandfather to think about your coral reefs? How can we expect the mother struggling to feed her children to worry about rainforests? How can we expect a frightened country to challenge their government?

It’s impossible, darling Earth. As I write this letter to you, I look outside at the lime-green leaves budding on the silver birch and tears graze the back of my throat. It is grief for the albatross chick, for the grandfather, and for the mother. As I feel it, I am held by your beauty and your resilience and your infinite complexity. I see how you make space for the delicacy of peonies and spiderwebs, the rough-and-tumble of crocodiles, the wisdom of water. I see that your tender care is always bigger than the suffering you witness.

We will emerge from this acute crisis, with many dead and with much rebuilding to do. Will we use what we have learnt? Will we harness the same courage to tackle the much bigger crisis that continues to unfold, the one that looms like an elephant over a mouse?

Dear Earth, it’s impossible. And. You can help us to grow our hearts, and when there’s room for grief, there is always room for green shoots.

With much love, Satya <3