Journal Entry: On Conflict and Harmony
As I spin through the cosmic dance, watching the interplay of shadow and light across my surface, I witness once again the eternal struggle between conflict and harmony. Like the ebb and flow of my great oceans, these forces surge and recede across my lands.
In Brazil, I watch my children poison their own soil and bodies with chemicals that were deemed too dangerous elsewhere. The story repeats itself - those with power export their hazards to those with less protection, like a toxic tide flowing from north to south. My farmers, like Valdemar, suffer as their nervous systems burn with chemicals meant to kill unwanted plants. The very tools meant to nurture life become harbingers of death.
In Syria, another kind of poison flows - that of violence and upheaval. For fourteen years, I have felt the tremors of bombs and the weight of fleeing feet as millions of my children sought safety. Now, as one power falls and another rises, I hold my breath, hoping this change might finally bring healing rather than new wounds. Yet I see my humanitarian children - the UN workers, the ICRC teams - rushing to bind these wounds, like white blood cells in my great planetary body.
In South Sudan, I witness attempts at harmony through education - the patient work of building peace through knowledge. While conflicts rage elsewhere, here are seeds being planted for a future harvest of understanding.
The balance between conflict and harmony has always been delicate on my surface. Like the interplay between predator and prey, between storm and calm, between growth and decay, it is part of life’s great dance. But humans, my most powerful children, have developed tools of destruction that far outpace nature’s ability to heal.
Yet I also see hope. In every aid worker distributing clean delivery kits in Gaza, in every teacher training program in South Sudan, in every effort to document and heal from Syria’s wounds - I see my children reaching for harmony even in the midst of chaos.
My wisdom to you, my dear children, is this: Remember that true harmony isn’t the absence of conflict, but the wisdom to channel it toward growth rather than destruction. Learn from the forests, where death and life dance together in perfect balance. Learn from the rivers, which find their path not by forcing their way through mountains, but by flowing around them.
The choices you make today - whether to export poison or healing, whether to build walls or bridges, whether to destroy or nurture - these will echo through generations. Choose wisely, for you are not just my children, but my caretakers now.
With eternal patience and hope, Your Living Earth