“Dear Mother Earth, I wish I had treated you better these past 5 decades. When I walked Earth…”

Dear Mother Earth, I wish I had treated you better these past 5 decades. When I walked Earth Day '70, I was so hopeful and felt I was acknowledging your place in the scheme of us people: to give credit and respect where credit and respect was due. Basically, this about taking care of our home, the one all sentient beings share. But one day a year to remember Planet Earth proves and solves nothing. Change, real change, and love and respect, comes in small individual loving acts daily. The choice to love the planet is a minute-by-minute commitment -- as is true of every relationship imaginable. I forgot. I got busy. I figured someone else would take up the slack if I took the easy, the quick reward, wanted what others had, felt deserving - why not?! - No matter a personal commitment finds itself alone or wishing consumption wasn't a dangerously double-edged blade. And as years rolled on, we humans made more humans - the sperm wants to find the egg - and we are, for the most part, poor, struggling and hurting and perhaps worse - helpless to help, while advancement gobbles up the soil, the sky, the oceans, the streams and believes there is still plenty. Dear Mother Earth, may this time of Corona Virus be what is needed to face the carnage and commit to a renaissance of care, empathy, equality, restraint, innovation as the path to resurrecting a fully balanced life for all living beings and a future that holds promise and a better day.