No man is an island,

Entire of itself;

Every man is a piece of the continent, 

A part of the main.

 

If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less,

As well as if a promontory were:

As well as if a manor of thy friend’s

Or of thine own were.

 

Any man’s death diminishes me,

Because I am involved in mankind.

And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;

It tolls for thee.

John Donne

 

“Of course, each of us is literally made of the Earth, as is all life on the planet.

The water in your body once flowed down the Nile, fell as monsoon rain onto India, and swirled around the Pacific.

The carbon in the organic molecules of your cells was mined from the air by the plants that we eat.

The salt in your sweat and tears, the calcium of your bones, and the iron in your blood all eroded out of the rocks of Earth’s crust;

and the sulphur of the protein molecules in your hair and muscles was spewed out by volcanoes.“

Lewis Dartnell, Origins.

It’s time we really learned to see ourselves as we really are.

Sawubona.