Inhabitant of the Earth

At work, we're able to take our leave for the summer. We get the go-ahead from our bosses and everyone fills in an Excel spreadsheet.

For me, it's not that I can't answer the question "what am I going to do this summer?" it's that I'm incapable of asking myself the question.

Something has happened to me that has changed the way I see the world. My vision of what I am. Of who I am. I think it was in 2019. I went to Mexico. It was the best! A luxury hotel in the middle of the jungle, palm trees, the beach, swimming pools and unlimited cocktails. But to visit the temple of Chichén Itzá... we had to drive for 2 hours. So in 2 hours we have time to see the reality of the Yucatan. It's poverty. These people live in the forest and they have a house, walls, a roof... But there are no windows and no doors. And the ground is dirt. When I got off the bus, a little girl asked me for money, imploring "por favor, por favor...".

It was a wonderful holiday. But I came back modified. And I think this has become even more pronounced since the little French girl in me decided to move to New Zealand. I realised that I wasn't French. I wouldn't be a kiwi as the New Zealanders are called. No .... I'm first and foremost an earthling. Earthling. Inhabitant of planet earth.

Ba what? Are you surprised that I'm saying this? Where is Thomas Pesquet at the moment? Next to the globe, in a way. Thomas sees the earth from space. And one day we'll be going to the Moon and Mars, we're told. So I have every right to say that I'm from Earth.

Not just being French changes everything. Terrienne means seeing the bigger picture. You understand the July-August holidays ... they're a drop in the ocean when you're an Earth person. I can see the world as a whole. I can imagine the earth turning. In fact, I can see my planet as if I were in the ISS myself. I stop seeing sunrise and sunset. Because it doesn't exist. The sun never sets. It's just that the more you see it, the more it's on the other side. Leanne sees it. I can't see it. And yet we're talking to each other at the same time, on video, in the same temporality. So the sun never sets. But it isn't. I can see that. In fact what is time? I don't think it exists either. We invented it to find our way around. But time doesn't exist. So that's good news: we can grow old without worrying about the passage of time. Lol

see the continents. I see the islands. Even the small ones. And all that is nothing at all on the scale of the globe, the rest is just water. 70%. Wow!

When I get a bit closer ... I can see the lights of the biggest cities in the world. And if you go even closer .... you can see ants swarming around. Us. 7 billion humans. And I can see me and Leanne.... 20,000km apart. But I can see us very clearly and I realise that we are two grains of sand in the universe. Two tiny little grains.

But today I'm happy. Yes, happy (how many months ago did I say that?) because the two little grains I've just mentioned have a job, a roof over their heads and, above all, their health. And I say to myself "what a fucking stroke of luck!

Because I approached the South American continent and the triangle-shaped continent .... and I saw India and Brazil. I saw flames in India. So I went a little closer into the triangle to understand. And I saw bonfires .... outside, in large numbers. They burn the bodies. Just like that, on a pile of wood. Like Game of Throne, I thought! Fucking hell, this isn't Game of Throne ... this is India in 2021 hit by a pandemic. A virus that kills 3 members of his family. I don't know anyone who's died from covid. (Or not yet either, you have to write)and I'm sure they'll tell me it's normal because I'm French. Not Indian. But if I'm an earthling. How do I live it?

Sometimes I think I should stop seeing the world through lines on maps called borders. (Because in real life it's like the sun going down.... they don't exist either) the world would have to collapse. No, not the world. I'm sorry. Societies. Governments. Oh sure, it would be a mess and we could imagine a Walking Dead apocalypse. But would we get together? Like ... earthlings with earthlings? Like Rick in his son Carl's vision, could we imagine a united world? (See season 9 Walkind Dead to understand this reference).

I thought the collapse was something I was living through. A pandemic. We're fucking in it. But while we're in it we don't realise, it'll be afterwards that we'll realise. Much later. That's why we still talk about the Second World War today. Because we realise everything that happened long afterwards.

So I was saying that we're living through a pandemic on an incredible scale, and already 2 years after it started in China, we can see that the rich countries are doing better than the poor countries. And that's it. Full stop. End of story. Everyone can go to bed.

Well, I, the earthling, said that the pandemic would unite us. And on this evening of May 2021.... I realise and understand that it is separating us. And even more so than before. The creator of Tesla gave his money to send men to the ISS, not for oxygen cylinders in India. He surely knows that the Earth is doomed and that the only way to save the human race is to live on Mars or elsewhere .... (just so we don't screw up one planet but two or three ...lol)

I see all this. And I feel alone. Because I don't see any other earthling close to me seeing the same thing as I do. And yet we're made up of the same people with two eyes. Why do I see the greatness of my planet and not others?

So sometimes to stop the images flashing past ... I close my eyes. Quite simply. Because I haven't found anything else yet.

But I've already managed to put a few words to my vision at the moment. And maybe, who knows, millennia from now, a child will come across this text and ask their parents "Mum, Dad, I don't understand this article .... before people weren't earthlings? .... they did live here on earth though.... why did the lady write that....?"

Then on that day, my soul, which will have gone much further than the ISS, will be able to draw a smile.

In the meantime, I close my eyes. I'm still not filling in that Excel table of holidays. I'm moving forward, that is to say on my own scale, and I'm waiting for the wind of life to blow away my little seed that I'm 20,000km away from. And it doesn't matter which way .... the earth is round, which is just as well.

Céline, Inhabitant of the Earth.

* Cover photo taken by Thomas Pesquet.