Oh, there it is.
It can be easy to miss, from this deep in the well. It doesn't look much like a marble from down here.
Sure, achieve enough altitude and its gorgeous curves can be descried, but not many get to see them. As for the rest of us, we see the horizon, and we see the phases of the moon, but few reflect much on what they mean. The horizon from the surface, after all, looks perfectly flat. It makes me sympathize a little with all the people back in the day who thought the world actually is flat, because its true shape is not a tangible, indisputable reality most of the time.
This causes us to forget what it is we are really standing on. And in turn it becomes easy to forget that, despite its apparent strength, our place within that strength is still very tenuous. It becomes easy to forget that our niche is still quite narrow.
It's easy to forget that our home is so terribly, terribly tiny.
This expanse of land and sea all around us is deceptive. Relatively speaking it is much less than a marble. It's a pale blue dot. It's a peaceful speck in a hostile universe.
These are things we need to remember, if we value this dot we call home. I think they're things we need to think about a lot more often than we do. We are at the dangerous time now, we're just smart enough to do something horribly stupid.
We need to be mindful of the narrowness of our niche, and how we are currently pushing ourselves right out of it.
Our very survival depends on remembering these things. Unfortunately, the vast majority of us will likely never see the shape of the earth in living color. Showing it in pictures is the next best thing.
But wait, I hear someone say, compared to us, and our measly mortal selves, the security of the earth doesn't seem worth all that upset. I mean, how could we possibly influence an entire planet? It's a lot bigger than a marble, or a dot, or a speck. Right?
Like most things, that depends on where you're standing.