“Space. The final frontier.”

William Shatner recently wrote about his experience going into outer space.

“My trip to space was supposed to be a celebration; instead, it felt like a funeral. It was among the strongest feelings of grief I have ever encountered. The contrast between the vicious coldness of space and the warm nurturing of Earth below filled me with overwhelming sadness.”

He goes on to write, “Everything I had thought was wrong. Everything I had expected to see was wrong. I had a different experience because I discovered that the beauty isn’t out there, it’s down here, with all of us. Leaving that behind made my connection to our tiny planet even more profound.”

We tend to believe that the quickest way to solve our problems is to abandon them. Let someone else deal with it. And with the problems we face with climate change, we may be tempted to believe that maybe we can go find another planet. But that isn’t realistic. There isn’t anywhere to go. The majority of the universe is dark and cold. We are the source of life, light and heat. We need to take care of what we have inherited.