Much like other children, my 5-year old brother is a master of honesty and exaggeration. To want or be anything more than “better” is to want and be “the whole wide world”, as he gestures with impossibly wide eyes. But he is also honest, and offers a feeble “how?” to himself and others.

I’ve been learning to adopt the same “how?”, admitting I do not know the answers I thought I would by now. There’s an irony in this question, because the phrase “on the world” implies us positively impacting people’s lives, instead of examining the largely negative impact we already exert on this physical world. When I asked my mother why she didn’t do more, when they sounded the alarm bells in the 80s that this timeline only gets shorter and the problem more insurmountable, she said “well, it just didn’t seem urgent”. She is one of the most sensitive and caring people I know, I’ve never doubted that.

Although, I’m beginning to think that contributing to reversing our human impact could be my impact. I used to think the only certainty of every day was that I was certainly one day closer to my last. And yet, the realization of my own insignificance and mortality is what makes me acutely aware and motivated to work towards something larger and longer than my lifetime. It gives me comfort that by doing this, I have outlived today. Today, I strive to ask, listen, speak, write, and make urgently and honestly.