wisdom
The elements that make up Earth, the fundamental building blocks of all life and matter, are virtually finite and continually recycled. Across aeons, through biological, geological, and atmospheric processes, they’re broken down, rearranged, and reconstituted into something new. The calcium in our bones may once have belonged to some ancient, extinct creature. It may have formed part of the Earth’s crust. It’s the same calcium found today in the bones of elephants and mice. When they die, it returns to the soil, where flora and fungi may take it up again. Who knows what it will be next. The oxygen in our bodies may once have moved through the veins of an early ancestor, or someone on the other side of the globe. It has passed through countless trees and plants, themselves grown from soil teeming with billions of organisms,
all made of the same elemental matter, all part of the same cycle. The water we drink becomes part of us. It moves through rivers, soil, roots, clouds, oceans, blood, and time. Drinking it, we temporarily become composed of the same matter as where we are. Change where we are, and our constitution changes too. Everything on Earth, living or not, is made from different combinations and arrangements of these elements. Our connection to the world around us is therefore not merely ecological, philosophical, or spiritual. It’s fundamental. Beneath the extraordinary diversity of life on Earth — the millions of forms, behaviours, adaptations, and ecosystems — is also a common imperative: to survive. This drive, like our constitution, and our home, is shared.
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