Where We Are

So there it is
I mean take a look
It's a pale blue dot

That's us
That's home
That's where we are
On it
Everybody you love
Everybody you know
Everybody you ever heard of
Lived out their days there

The aggregate of all our joy and suffering
Thousands of confident ideologies, religions, economic doctrines
Every hunter and forager
Every hero and coward
Every creator and destroyer of civilizations
Every king and peasant
Every young couple in love
Every hopeful child
Every mother and father
Every inventor and explorer
Every revered teacher of morals
Every corrupt politician
Every uncorrupt politician too
Every superstar
Every supreme leader
Every saint and sinner in the history of our species
Lived there

The Earth is a very small stage in a great cosmic arena
Think of the rivers of blood
Spilled by all those generals and emperors
Presidents and prime ministers, party leaders
So that in glory and triumph
They can become the momentary masters
Of the corner
Of a dot

Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one part of the dot
On the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of another part of the dot
How frequent their misunderstandings
How eager they are to kill one another
How fervent their hatreds

Our posturings
Our imagined self-importance
The delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe
Seemed to me
Challenged
By this point of pale light

Our planet is a lonely speck
In the great enveloping cosmic dark
In our obscurity
In all this vastness
There is no hint that there is anyone who will come save us from ourselves
That will happen only if we do it

To me
This picture underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another
And to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot
The only home
We've ever known