What do you see in this image? Why do you see what you see? Perception is a crazy thing to behold, but to understand the value of what we see here starts with the smallest piece of physics. Both the green plant gripping for life and the dead brown matter are from seeds! What lies before my gaze is dust. This dust is what binds us to the heavens above. There is beauty in this brown matter for it was once created within the fiery crucibles that light our lives. It traveled throughout space and time to get here, to become here. Blown by solar winds and pushed by gravity, it is now here beneath our feet. We and this cosmic star dust, called dirt, are one and the same.

The irony here is that this very dynamic part of nature is swept out of site, quite literally, under a rug! I cannot speak for most Americans for I do not know that many of them, but I may offer my perspective on this notion as a person from the States. There are many descriptions for what is seen in this picture, but they are all wrong. Pride is a terrible thing that yields little, but being right is the worst. How do we unchain our hearts from this tiresome argument of righteousness so that we may free our problem solving minds!?! The difficulty arises when we think ourselves much more than dirt. There is a dirt pile that sits in a chair eating dirt from a TV dinner box while basking in the noisy sound and flashy glow of a flat square of dirt on the wall; this man would be hard pressed to wonder about the value of it. But oh my, the wondrous things dirt can become!

We exist within the resin of dirt. And when we look up into the night sky we can bask in the awe of the connectivity of this universe. We are a part of a great reaction and we have the ability to choose. It is our gift to choose how the effect of us will ripple through time.