The earth existed for a long time before humans arrived, and it will continue long after we are gone. Earth doesn’t need us. It doesn’t need us to observe it, to interpret it, and it certainly doesn’t need us to modify it.  I think the planet will sigh in relief when we are gone. Having said that, we didn’t come into to universe. We came out of it, like a wave rises out of the ocean.  We are part of it.  We are one stitch, one loop of thread in the fabric of the cosmos.

It kind of takes the pressure off to realize that we’re not necessary. We will leave our scars on the planet, but the jungles will grow up to obliterate our developments.  Maybe the ice caps will form again. Maybe this will become an ocean planet whose former continents are submerged. Maybe something huge will collide with this place,  vaporizing it and starting over again.  We tend to think of that as destruction, but it’s actually more like creation!  It’s not sad if there’s no one to feel the sadness. It’s just the way things unfold in a dynamic universe.

We can’t destroy it. We can only destroy ourselves.