Like many, I love to look at the stars

I love the fact that ours is just one among many

What I love about astronomy is that our constellations tell a storyOur constellations were born from mythology

Mythology was our first attempt to understand the world in which we live

We put a God in everything and those Gods would give us our reasons

Why is the sky blue?

Who chose blue?

Gods

How come men have nipples?

It′s the will of the Gods

Why does this wine taste so good?

There's a God in it

And for a while, there was not a single thing that the gods could not explain

We believed that their anger gave us lightning

Their despair gave us rain

We whispered our desires to them, believing that their charity would sustain us

Those Gods... were just stories

But stories became a large part of how we learn

They burn lessons into our memories

They become a part of how we remember; we can remember almost everything

Right down to that first unbearable bee sting

When we learned that this tiny blue marble we call the world has rules

Rule number one: don′t fuck with the bees

An unforgettable lesson brought to you by your memories

I remember that I grew up loving mythology

I remember the story of the titan Atlas, who was also the god of astronomy

The original global positioning system sending sailors safely home by telling them which constellation to keep starboard

He taught us about the stars, and in all this, while he held up ours

Our pale blue dot

But Atlas is caught between two different tellings of his story

In the first, he leads a rebellion against Olympus and is then sentenced to hold the heavens on his shoulders for eternity

In the second story, he is chosen to be the guardian of the pillars that hold up the earth and sky

I prefer the second story

It means that the world is not a punishment; but rather, a responsibility

But how can just one be charged with such a burden?

How can just one be responsible for all this?

When I think of Atlas, I think of a single drop of rain

I think how unfair it would be to hold a single drop solely responsible for making the entire world clean again

I remember how my grandmother tried to explain our world to me-

She told me a story

She said the ground and the sky, they love each other

But they don't have arms

So rain; that's just how they hold one another

I began to see how the earth and sky need each other

But I wondered about us

In this perfect design, where do we fit?

Which piece of the puzzle are we?

Like constellations, I began to see a connection between dots and numbered my thoughts

And drew lines from one to the next

I began to see us in the context of a bigger picture, sharpening the blur slowly into focus

We are Atlas

I saw that this pale blue dot, this one world, is all we get

There will be no reset button, no new operating system, no downloadable upgrade

We will not be allowed to trade in our old world for a new one with climate control or better fuel efficiency

We get one shot at this

Dismiss all reports of second chances; we get one

And yet we draw advances on our future as if we one day won′t be held accountable-

We will

We are

The human race runs toward a finish line emblazoned with the worlds ′too far' and wonders

Will we ever cross it?

Have we already?

We are faced with the seemingly impossible talk

And it′s okay to be afraid

Our dilemma stands before us like a mountain carved into a blockade, the sheer magnitude of our problem would be enough to dissuade anyone

How do we save the world?

We lay in our beds curled into question marks, wondering

What can we do?

Where do we start?

Is hope a glue crazy enough to hold us together while we're falling apart?

The burden seems immense

But we can do this

We must take the martial arts approach to loving our planet-

Love as self-defense

Forget about the cost

There will be no other thing as worth saving as this

Nothing more important; nothing as precious

This is home

All of our stories start and end here

We are sheltered within an atmosphere that has given us every single breath we will ever take

Every monument we have ever made has come from the flesh of our planet

Water like blood, skin like soil, bones like granite

It is not a myth, there is no debate, facts are in

Fact is, there′s never been any question

We are facing crisis

We dismiss the truth not because we can't accept it, but because having to commit ourselves to change is a scary prospect for anybody

The most alarming part of the statement ′we are facing crisis'

Isn't the word ′crisis′

It's the word ′we'

Because those two letters take the responsibility away from one and rest it squarely on the shoulders of everybody

We are Atlas now

But our strength will come from finding a way to share in shouldering the responsibility of turning the impossible into somehow

Somehow, we will do this

We can do this

We can dismiss apathy; we can reject uncertainty

We can be the new chapter in our story

We will not see change immediately

We must act in faith as the hour hand grips the minute hand and they land on the eleventh hour

We must believe like the seed that change is possible to see

Never seize the flower, it grows knowing it must become more than what it was

It changes, because in growth, all of its potential can be unlocked

Change is like rain, it starts with a single drop

Just one, like our pale blue dot

Caught in an endless waltz called gravity, we circle the sun, wondering who, if anyone left the light on

We are constellations drawn upon the earth, we are connected to one another, we are bound

We must behave as the arms that connect the ground to the sky

We must try to be more like the rain

Our stories may differ, our goal is the same

How do we save our pale blue dot?

We act as the rain, realizing that each individual drop is as equal and important as any

We act as one

Now, we are many