Thank Goodness It's Monday #405



Cloudless Earth from Space
(a composite daytime image from NASA)

ON EARTH DAY

THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE OUR HOME

(OR IS THERE?)

As you know (I hope) my sense of humor tends to favor the paradoxical or ironic. I like “jokes” that make you pause and think as well as smile.

In connecting this to the self-improvement spirit of TGIM: One of my long-time favorite observations in this vein has been the near-classic:

You’re unique

… just like everyone else.

Get it?

Of course you do. It’s appealing because it rightly honors our individuality while at the same time supporting our “Everyman” interconnectedness. And it has the additional advantage of sucking a bit of the hot air out of such a pretentious bit of blather.

 

In a similar vein, with an eye to acknowledging that today is Earth Day 2013, there’s the observation:

You’re one in a million

… which means, that rounding off,

there are about 316 just like you in the USA

and 7,000 or so more in the world.

(If you want to be up-to-the-second precise there’s an enlightening Population Clock moving ever forward HERE.)

And, although we all occasionally have difficulty grasping the scope and meaning of such big numbers, that kind of numerical acknowledgement is the bridge to today’s –

TGIM EARTH DAY OBSERVATION: Our Earth, the one we share with over 7 billion other people is –

Unique -- but unique in a qualified way

Here’s the quick math: Our sun is one of about 200 billion stars in the Milky Way. But it’s not typical. Only about 5 percent of the stars are similar in mass and luminosity.  So, doing the math, there are 10 billion stars in the galaxy similar to our sun. According to recent results from NASA’s Kepler space observatory, 23 percent of sun-like stars have Earth-size planets orbiting them and only 10 percent of those planets are at a similar distance from their suns as Earth is from our sun. That suggests then, conservatively, there could be 230 million habitable Earth-like planets in the galaxy.

So… If there are 230 million more planets just like ours spinning around in the near-by galactic neighborhood –

What’s the big deal with Earth Day?

TGIM TAKEAWAY: In its qualified way, our Earth is unique – just like we are. And we need to honor that uniqueness just as we like to be recognized for our distinctive individuality.

And no, this is not going to be an Earth Day “global climate change” rant. (Although I do stand with the overwhelming number of scientists who caution that we ignore it at our peril.)

But the TGIM case I’d like you to consider is the human-to-human one. 

You (or I) individually make up <0.000000001 percent of the population and that tiny percentage is getting smaller by the nanosecond. But we cannot run our lives without regard for the other 99.999999999 percent.

Thought leader Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980) reminded us, “On Spaceship Earth there are no passengers; everybody is a member of the crew. We have moved into an age in which everybody’s activities affect everybody else.”

To live successfully on our highly connected and interdependent Big Blue Marble, we must act with awareness and respect for others.

But you know this.

• Some version of “Do unto others” is fundamental to virtually all religious or philosophical practices.
• It’s certainly a precept that governs successful family dynamics.
• Our communities run best if all the political players can abide by that guiding principle.
• The best business dealings have an “Everyone Wins” component.
• The most productive relationship building begins when we seek to understand and fill the needs of the other guy.
• The lasting partnerships we treasure are underpinned by the ability to find your happiness and fulfillment in striving to meet the needs and the desires of the ones you care about.

 

TGIM EARTH DAY ACTION IDEA:  “Make you the world a bit more beautiful and better because you have been in it.”

 

At its heart that sentiment has a variety of attributions. The source I like best is from the grandmother of Edward Bok, a self-made man who actively did what he philosophized and, in fact, made planet-improving contributions early in the 20^th Century that stand as a testament to him to this day.

TGIM EARTH DAY IDEA IN ACTION: “Be the change you wish to see in the world” – sort of.

This bumper-sticker-on-an-eco-friendly-car sentiment, attributed to Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, was probably never directly said by the Mahatma (“Great Soul” in Sanskrit).

Sorry.

 

What is definitively spelled out in the Gandhi sources (in a paragraph from 1913 in one of his 98 volumes; Vol. 13, Ch. 153, page 241 to be precise) goes like this:

“We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him…. We need not wait to see what others do.”

Several years ago, in an op-ed piece in the New York Times, Brian Morton, the director of a writing program at Sarah Lawrence College who is also troubled by the misquote pointed out:

 

 

"Here, Gandhi is telling us that personal and social transformation go hand in hand, but there is no suggestion in his words that personal transformation is enough. In fact, for Gandhi, the struggle to bring about a better world involved not only stringent self denial and rigorous adherence to the philosophy … it also involved a steady awareness that … only a great number of people working together with discipline and persistence” can bring about change. 

TGIM Takeaway: And that’s why and how each of the unique >0.000000001 percent of us should observe/celebrate this Earth Day.

And every day.

 

Now that would be a big deal.

Geoff Steck
Chief Catalyst
Alexander Publishing & Marketing

8 Depot Square

Englewood, NJ 07631
201-569-5373
tgimguy@gmail.com

 

P.S.  “What’s an earth for,” asks the anonymous wit, “but to make a heaven of?”



Cloudless Earth from Space
(a composite night image from NASA)