Paradise on Earth

I thought about "Avatar" last night as I walked my dog. I just saw the movie abut the beautiful paradise-planet and the wild, free people living on it, in it, with it, and I thought: if I could die now knowing that I'll be reborn there, I would do it in an eye blink. I felt homesick. Happy because I got a glimpse of home and ready to cry, because I wasn't there.

Then I looked around me and realized that I don't have to go anywhere, that the paradise is right here and I don't have to die to enter it. I have to do something infinitely harder - I have to choose to open my eyes, I have to choose to see, I have to choose to hear, I have to choose to be present. Right here.

It is so much easier to change that world than it is to change myself.

"It makes me sad for all that we've lost, for all that humans lost" a friend said yesterday about the movie, and I thought: we haven't lost anything. We haven't lost nature, we haven't lost magic, we haven't lost the ability to be, to connect, to feel. We are surrounded by trees, by animals, by plants, by mountains and seas ready to connect, ready to become allies, partners. Ready to share. We are surrounded by beautiful, free, wild nature full of wild beings and we can be as beautiful, free and wild, on this planet, right now. All we have to do is choose it, all we have to do is open to it.

And if we don't?

The beautiful, magical forests of Pandora are hell full of danger and terror to those who will not look. The beautiful, wild creatures are vicious monsters to those who don't listen. The wild, free existence of Pandora's people is primitive and ignorant to those who will not be present.

We may make Earth into a garden equal to Pandora's forests. We may replant our forests, we may replenish the wildlife, we may plant orchards and tend gardens. We may implement ecological solutions, we may reduce the emission of poisons into the air, into the water, into the soil. We may all drive electric cars powered by solar batteries. But what good will it do if we don't look, if we don't listen, if we are not present?

If we don't look then the wild, beautiful forests will remain a dangerous place, alien place, fit only to be cut for timber, or kept only to provide us with atmosphere. If we don't listen then the free, wonderful creatures will remain dumb animals, fit only for slaughter or careful birding in preservations. If we are not present then being in nature, being present, connected, will continue to be considered primitive and ignorant, and we will remain shut in our towers made of glass, where nature exists only for decoration or as a mean of our survival.

There is nothing that we have to do to turn Earth into paradise. There is nothing that we have to do to become free and wild, fearless, supported, connected, present, like the people of Pandora. The paradise is already here, right now.

We can enter it whenever we choose to … and if we don't choose to, we will never find it. If we don't look, if we don't listen, if we are not present, then we will never find it. No mater what we do, no matter where we go, no matter how we change the world.