The Quiet Thing We Keep Forgetting

When you think about the word home;

what comes to mind?

What images surface?

What memories rise?

What feelings linger just beneath the word itself?

For some, it’s a sore subject.

For others, it’s warmth.

It’s a soft, glowing, familiar quiet kind of belonging that doesn’t ask questions.

A home can be many things,

to many different people.

Read that again, a little slower this time.

Your home is not just a home for you,

or whoever else resides within its walls.

For all intents and purposes, your home is an entire ecosystem—

a living, breathing, beating heartbeat of a network of interactions, routines, energies, other lifeforms, and silent dependencies.

At the end of February, bleeding over into the beginning of March, the home my partner and I created together began to unravel.

We were unraveling.

We were separating.

And during that time, beneath the churning, violent waves of emotion, there was one thought that kept repeating itself, over and over again:

My home.

Our home.

This delicate ecosystem we had created within these walls was being dismantled.

Falling apart.

It felt like trying to hold onto a handful of broken glass.

Each piece, once whole, now shattered,

still beautiful,

also still sharp enough to cut.

Delicate.

Oh, how very delicate our homes can be.

And yet… we build them anyway.

Not just within four walls,

but across neighborhoods,

through towns,

stretching into cities,

expanding into countries…

into whole nations.

These, too, are ecosystems.

These, too, are homes.

Yes, your country is a home.

But let me ask you something.

During those moments,

when nostalgia pulled at you,

when you longed for a place that felt like home-

Did the image of Earth ever come to mind?

Not a house. Not a room.

Not a person.

Not a place.

But this…

this vast, spinning, breathing planet beneath your feet.

Because underneath all of it…

that is home.

Not metaphorically.

Not even poetically.

Literally.

This planet,

with its forests that inhale what we exhale, its oceans that regulate what we cannot control, its soils that grow what sustains us— is the largest, most intricately complex ecosystem we will ever belong to.

And like any home,

it is quite delicate.

Fiercely, and sometimes quietly resilient, yes.

But not completely indestructible.

We tend to think of home as something that holds us,

something that will always be there for us to return to.

But what if, just as much as it holds us, it’s something we are responsible for holding, too?

Because home is not just where we are.

It’s something we are a part of.

And whether we realize it or not,

each and every one of us is all cohabiting here.

Together.

This is our home.

And it’s about time we started treating it like one.

Happy Earth Day.