The year started as it usually does. New Year’s day. Another birthday. Friends birthdays… and as always, new possibilities for the new decade.

As we experience in winter, it brings shorter days. Struggling with the gray days. Seeking the sunlight as much as possible when they present themselves – sometimes we’re lucky and get stretches of brightness.

Breathing fresh cool air is wonderful, but I get a bit freaked out when we have crazy tornado weather in early January, and the flowers are blooming, and the birds who normally act okay are flying into windows and not coping well with the unexpected near-summer temp days that string themselves intermittently amongst the “normal” for winter days. Strange? A bit.

But, it has happened before, maybe, but not in our lifetimes so much. We maybe weren’t here then. I looked up the history… but the fires. Those are truly what is the most concerning. That and the knock-on effects. The droughts. All the stuff we living in a “privileged first world country” don’t see, that I have seen and you can’t “un-see or not remember” what you see that looks like that. You can’t, if you have any empathetic bones in your body… Or any sort of wired-in alarms within your soul.

What we see and witness is being blasted out every minute of every day. Citizen witness-reporting. Citizen scientists commenting. We observe the culture. The culture of our childhoods is not the culture of today. It is change. “Life is change. How it differs from the rocks…” BUT… guess what? Rocks change all the time. They move, oblivious to the life standing on them, or growing around them…

The law of conservation of mass or principle of mass conservation states that for any system closed to all transfers of matter and energy, the mass of the system must remain constant over time, as system’s mass cannot change, so quantity can neither be added nor be removed. This means that your fine automobile was something else at one time, and now has been recomposed into your fine automobile until such time that it, and all its parts, are dismantled and again go through the process of returning to the earth or being recomposed into something else.

Think about it. What this does not address is that during the times of decomposition, transition and recompilation multiple processes are at work – natural processes or human processes – but then, think again – humans are “natural” unless… and then the possibility arises that humans evolved from “something else” that joined with a natural being and a number of theories come from that. Religion. Science. Lore. Extremely compelling ancient evidence that points to early in human existence, beings having the ability to view from high distances – the evolution and migration is quite well documented in rock records, as well as in ancient texts – even if those are cuneiform on rock scrolls – and in artwork in caves – interesting depictions.

Fascinated by timelines stacked on top of one another of what happened simultaneously on the earth, these continue to change as new discoveries are made.

Geology and geophysics – the science says: Rocks shudder under the weight of oceans and other rocks. Driven by energy coming from the core of our planet. Soft squishy humans and other animals are affected. We are supposedly the “intelligent” leaders and stewards of the orb. Despite this tag, sometimes we don’t act like it. Earthquakes can surprise people living in areas where faults have not been identified – this can introduce catastrophic outcomes. Geologists and geophysicists and their sub-professions are humans, first, scientists – and the “tools du jour” are what enables them to make discoveries.

We measure – we alert – we sometimes do not get the alert in time. Kind of like ants, we are… milling around. We try. We work at improving all the time. But we’ve lost our abilities to get along in the process.

Have we not taught our children that getting along is important? Self-focus is not. We really cannot afford to not share and consider our impact on others. Each time you toss something away, it’s on its way to entering that process of decomposition – a long process indeed.

Being a good citizen of the planet is about looking after others everywhere. It is about considering the impact of being cruel and how it will, no question, come back to haunt you – at least it will if you have a conscience and morals. The selfish politics rising in popularity over the last decade and a half, is not healthy for our continued existence in the end – it will destroy us. Guaranteed.

Teach our children and grandchildren well. Like the song of the sixties tells us to do. But, extending this to all of our family members, and young friends – teach our nieces and nephews that our planet and everyone are worth getting along.

Please. Where you do technology, balance with hand-made art. Where you listen to digital music, get out a guitar and a drum – or a ukulele or a banjo! Sing out loud! Read books! Real ones with pages! Draw pictures of what you see. Never forget how to do those things by hand and that the digital representations are just that… representations.