Heroes Not Zombies

“The earth, from here, is like heaven. It flows with colour. A burst of hopeful colour. When we’re on that planet we look up and think heaven is elsewhere, but here is what the astronauts and cosmonauts sometimes think: maybe all of us born to it have already died and are in an afterlife. If we must go to an improbable, hard-to-believe-in place when we die, that glassy, distant orb with its beautiful lonely light shows could well be it.” – from “Orbital” by Samantha Harvey.

The mental capacities we humans have developed allow us to do incredible things, not least the ability to create a distance, and the ability to change our perspective. The ability to put a space, or a pause, between all the signals and stimuli entering our bodies, and carrying out an action, is the difference between reacting and responding. You know about the famous “knee jerk”, where a doctor hits a tendon in your knee and your legs jumps forward….this is an instant reaction carried out at the level of the spinal cord. It doesn’t require any thought, and it’s not possible to suppress or enhance it consciously. But when we act in life, we have the chance to put a gap into the stimulus-response loops which pass through our brains. We don’t need to act only on auto-pilot. We can “stand back”, consider, or reflect, and then choose what actions we want to take. This is responding instead of reacting…..an important skill in managing anxiety and learned loops of behaviour.

It’s this same “necessary distance” which enables us to have a sense of self, separate from the world in which we are living. Of course, that separation is a sort of delusion because we never step outwith the flow of all that exists. But it’s a useful skill.

The other skill, to change perspective, is a different way of creating a distance, of stepping off the treadmill, switching off the autopilot. We can do it by altering, or disrupting a habit. Walking a different route, shopping in a different store, visiting a different town or country. It’s a big part of why I decided to emigrate from Scotland to France when I retired….to force myself to experience a whole gamut of different perspectives….physical, cultural, social…..to learn to communicate and think in a different language.

In her book, Orbital, Samantha Harvey describes in detail these experiences of distance and perspective. In this passage I quoted above she prompts us to think about heaven and earth by flipping the normal perspective. Instead of standing on the surface of the earth gazing “towards the heavens”, she describes the astronauts on the International Space Station, gazing down towards the surface of the earth and finding it “heavenly”.

I often think this life, this planet, is heavenly. It is so improbable, so incredible, so amazing…..how did it come to be? How did Life come to exist, and the myriad of species evolve? How, despite all our seeking, and all our statistical beliefs, this planet we call Earth, we call Home, remains singular, unique, quite unlike any other in the entire universe.

When you stop to experience this planet, and take time to reflect, and to wonder, it’s not hard to experience it as heaven. There is so much beauty in this world. We should protect that, nourish that, care for that, value that, make it a goal to enable all human beings to experience this planet as heaven on earth.

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