Hello, it’s me…your planet.

I usually stay out of your politics, but things have gotten so out of hand I feel the need to communicate with you directly. My usual methods of talking to you symbolically through exploding symptoms (in the same way your body signals you with health symptoms), don’t seem to be getting through.

For the majority of your history you romped around my surface like any other animal, and your populations were easily kept in check through natural forces, the same methods I apply to all species. Eventually, however, you became remarkably successful at thwarting my efforts at reducing your impact.  I give you disease and you cure it.  I limit your food supply and you develop agricultural practices to feed your masses.  I thrash you with violent natural disasters and many of you hunker down in sturdy dwellings, weathering my storms.  Whenever I do succeed in reducing your numbers you quickly replenish them by immediately returning to your reproductive addictions.

Unfortunately for you, these accomplishments, enabling you to continue living beyond your means, only delay your inevitable fall. A fact you’ve been oblivious to.  And when the fall comes, it won’t be pretty.

Eventually I will win. I have to for life on me to continue.  I know your exponential growth feels natural to you, because it is.  You are no different from any other animal focused on individual success, inadvertently building a larger population, but like all species, you’ll eventually be humbled.  Before I crush this insurrection of yours, however, I’m going to attempt to open your eyes, foolhardy though it may be.  You can continue on this path until your fall, as all creatures upon me do, or you can harness the same intelligence you’ve employed to overcome my forces and realize your predicament, adjusting your behavior accordingly.

What you consistently overlook, or forget, and need to consider if you want to take the necessary steps to ease the inevitable carnage, is that balance is the operating system I use to run this show. All life forms, including yours, are running on the same operating system of balance, whether you like it or not.  There is no escape from this.

Your every waking moment is intimately connected to me. You arise when I rotate to the light, and slumber when I turn to the dark, giving your body a balance between rest and activity.  You live within my temperate zones, those places where the cold and heat are suitably balanced for your needs (unless my refrigerant systems on my northern and southern poles melt).  You’re born with bilateral symmetry, your bodies fluctuate around a balanced temperature and pH, you function best when consuming a balanced diet, and you learn to take it easy after a night of overindulgence to return to balance.  You seek balance between work and play (as either extreme leads to problems), and you strive to find the perfect mate for the harmony it brings, enjoying the yin and yang of masculine and feminine energy.  Any offspring created from this coupling consists of a balance between the two parents.

You seek balance because of me.

Within the wilderness of my ecosystems is a system of balance, keeping populations in check (owls and hawks constrain mice, while dwindling mice populations prevent an overabundance of owls and hawks). The climate, unsurprisingly, is also a balanced system, or at least it was before you cut down all the trees and released all those greenhouse gasses.  Releasing all those gasses required more trees, not less, to absorb and thus counteract, the release.

Look at the graph created from collected ice cores and you’ll see a wave of oxygen and carbon dioxide fluctuating around a balanced point for the last 800,000 years, up until your industrial revolution, when the graph shoots upwards far from its natural balance.

Every breath you take, oxygen in, carbon dioxide out, is an intimate action of balance, connecting you to my flora, and thus me.

Even your government reflects this natural system, the opposing sides dueling it out before hopefully settling somewhere in between their preferred positions. Your politicians tend to fail because they focus on money and power instead of balance and health.  Until you demand they work together for a balanced approach, one that is in harmony with me, you’ll continue to experience the consequences of imbalance.  Think about that before you elect a leader.  Does your candidate understand your planet’s natural guidelines?  Are they themselves balanced individuals?

As for now, maybe you should try balancing out your masculine domination with some feminine leadership, hoping for a more nurturing and holistic approach to how you dwell upon me, especially since your current masculine option embodies your worst characteristics.  He is ungrounded, self-centered, morally vacant, and will only lead you further away – detrimentally so – from any reconciliation with me, and reconciling with me is your only long-term hope.  He is the macho mask cowardly men wear to cover up their unbalanced insecurities, acting like an unevolved baboon believing the world is his harem.  Don’t be conned.

You want things to change, and you are willing to angrily blow up the system to make it happen.  But are you sure you fully understand all of the ramifications?  Are your desired changes aligned with your planet?  Have you ever even considered such a notion?  If not, maybe you should think again.  Instead of asking, how do we become stronger and wealthier and more dominant, it’s high time you asked yourselves, how do we create a healthy, balanced society? How do we encourage all nations to do the same?

Here’s a clue. Look to me – that thing you walk on, build on, depend on.  Think harmony, not domination or exploitation.  Whether you like it or not, you do not have dominion over all.  Some of you will vehemently object to this and insist that you do.  You’ll even prove it by doing whatever you please, but this is like an adolescent rebelliously stuffing donuts or other harmful substances down his gullet.  You’re free to do so, but you’ll suffer the consequences (learning my truth in the end), and if you’ve been paying attention, you’ll know I’ve been building up a slew of consequences to deal with your behavior.  Any imbalance is eventually counterbalanced by me.  There is always an opposing force.  There has to be for life on this planet to continue.  That is how I operate.

You are individually focused with a drive for more, which can easily mutate into greed, but there are reasons you flock together. You need each other, often overcoming trivial differences to fight common enemies.  That is the situation you find yourselves in now, except that I am not your enemy.  I am your breath, your food, your drink.

I am that peaceful, mystical sensation you experience when walking in nature. When you learn to recognize that all of your problems stem from your spiritual disconnection from me, you can start to heal.

Do that or else.