When the space probe Voyager One, on February 14, 1990, six billion kilometers away from Earth and preparing to leave the solar system, turned its camera towards us, it captured only a single pale blue dot.
This speck of cosmic dust is our home, our sweet home in the universe. With seas filled with islands of rotting plastic, rivers of fetid sewage, vast dry and arid plains and fields, forests felled and burned, seas swept by nets and insatiable boats, and deserts of sand and ice. But it is also a place full of exuberant life, from resilient microorganisms capable of overcoming the most extreme environments, to us humans, supposedly the top of the hierarchy of life on our planet... And also its greatest threat!
Despite our insignificance in the Universe, we are capable of preserve e devastate, recover and break, build and destroy nature, compromising the environment, our health and future generations. To survive and evolve, the human species has always needed to advance over nature and other living beings. Fighting against adversity, predators, the elements and natural phenomena made us strong, intelligent and courageous. But also ambitious, selfishes and cruels. And hypocrites!
Nowadays, lots of governors, personalities and too much rich people defend, inside their expensive cars, their yachts and their private jets, the preservation of the planet, sustainability, the fight against the causes of climate change. While fight for power and wealth, fame and popularity, for a new world deal... And they watches, passively, at his big and confortable houses at paradises, billions of human beings fighting for survival every day after day, with less than a dollar a day to support themselves and their relatives elder and their children, and so many of them, beyond that, being oppressed by dictatorial and inhuman regimes, not even being able to exercise the slightest right to complain about their daily hardships and pain...
And... The solution to these threats? Simple: love, true love. To love to yourself - but with the real love, not the fake love, narcissistic, ambitious and selfish! To love for others, that love that turns into dedicated work, sacrifices, moderation, changing habits, charity, forgiveness, respect and tolerance. Love for nature, a work of Divine creation that we must admire, respect, cultivate, recover and preserve, getting from it no more than what is necessary to satisfy our needs and not our excessive ambitions for wealth and power.
Is it an utopic thing? Is it dreaming too much? It might be... But someone once already preached this, and changend the hole human history: he was capable to give us his life on a cross to convince us that it's worth loving ourselves, our neighbor, the Gods creation, including that pale blue dot, unique in the Universe.
