Genna G’s Reviews > Atmosphere > Status Update

[4/4]
That is why time never stands still. And that is why, small as they were, Joan’s choices had added up to something magnificent. In the changing of seasons these past four years, Joan had found it all. Something she loved, someone she loved, the parts of her she had hidden within herself.

[3/4]
They fall in love and make mistakes and learn new things and feel tired. They lose people they love and fail themselves and change or never change. They get new jobs and fall out of love. They convince themselves that if they just get this one thing, they will finally be happy. Day in and day out, the Earth keeps spinning and revolving and sailing through the Milky Way.

[2/4]
Then Summer turns to Fall, fall to winter, soon it loops back around and winter thaws to Spring, Spring to Summer. Through it all, babies are born from stardust and grow taller. They begin to walk and talk and learn the days of the week, the months, the seasons. Then they look up to the sky to she where they came from. And the adults spend more of their time looking down.

[1/4]
But as Joan had taken each small step forward, the world had kept spinning on its axis. Days had formed into weeks and months and years which people marked with watches and calendars all based on the only thing they had to tell what time it was: the stars. As the Earth orbits the sun, it shifts towards the sun’s warm embrace.

[21/21]
How does that not instantly make us more in debt to one another and also offer us the comfort that we are not alone.”

[20/21]
I want to spend my energy thinking not of how my actions might be frowned upon by a man in the sky, but how my actions affect every living and non-living thing around me. Life is God. My life is tied to yours and to everyone’s on this planet.

[19/21]
“As scientists, we call this symbiosis and it is a consequence of evolution but the nature consequences of our connections to one another, that’s God to me. I believe in it because I can see it with my own eyes. I know it exists. But I also believe in it because I want to believe in it.

[18/21]
What better reason to take care of this Earth and everything on it than the knowledge that we are of one another.” Joan thought about this so often that it startled her now to realize she’d never put it into words before. What a thrill it was to say it all. “The trees need our breath and our breath needs the trees.” She continued.

[17/21]
Even what is in my body right now, the cells, the air, the bacteria, it’s only mine. It is a point of connection with every other living thing. Made up of the same kinds of particles, ruled by the same physical laws. When you die, someone will bury you or turn your body into ashes. Eventually, you will return to the Earth. You already are a part of the Earth.

[16/21]
“Or better yet, we are the universe. I would go as far as to say that as human beings we’re less of a who and more of a when. We are a moment in time when all of our cells have come together in this body. But our atoms were many things before and they will be many things after. The air I’m breathing is the same air your ancestors breathed.