#1 Growing with Gaia

I recently watched a video of a man explaining a concept I haven’t encountered before – the idea of Gaia.

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If you’re curious to explore the video yourself, you can find it here:

Gaia is not so much a philosophy or belief as it is a realisation. It feels like one of those “ah ha!” moments, where something suddenly clicks and the world makes a bit more sense.

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Gaia is a beautiful recognition of the interconnectedness of beings, objects, moment, and atoms within our world. It’s the understanding that everything is fundamentally made of the same particles – just arranged and composed in different ways*.

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*I am prepared for all the science majors to correct me here, but anyways.

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It encourages you to see the world through a Gaia-ed lens. To realise that the atoms making up your body are no more or less special than those forming a chair, a tree, or a cloud. That all things have a fundamental purpose and meaning on this Earth: to simply exist.

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No one told the tree that it has to be the best tree in the universe. That it must be taller, more beautiful, more resilient and more popular than any other tree. It just exists, doing its thing until its time is up. Sure – it needs sturdy roots. It needs to disperse seeds to reproduce, and it must ensure it gets enough water and sunlight. But beyond that, it simply sways in the breeze, witnessing the passing seasons.

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So why do we feel the need to be more than just another tree? Do we need to? Are we truly more important than the trees in the forest?

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We are all made up of molecules vibrating at unfathomable rates. Thinking. Feeling. Existing. All things are conceived, shaped, subject to an array of experiences and transformational events – and then perish.

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Creatures, objects, moments – playing the game, watching the world spin.

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And now, with Gaia in mind, we begin to understand: we are all connected.