Home, the word itself puts images in our heads about what we personally call our home. Home is different for everyone in which we all live in separate houses, have separate families, and we all have different things that make our homes unique to us. Yes we all have our own so called “homes”, but the earth is everyone’s home. Since the earth is everyone’s and everything’s home it is or job as humans to take care of this magnificent creation. Between the poem written by Edward Field, and the article written by Diane Ackerman, they both have the same ideas about; what our homes mean to us, how we are destroying and neglecting the perfect place called earth, and how we might not be able to change history, but learn from it and not repeat those same mistakes made.
Diane stated that, “there is no place like home”, when she quoted The Wizard of Oz(paragraph 2). I believe she is most certainly correct,and that there is no place like our unique homes that we each have. I do not think that is the picture that she wanted us to get. As Field starts off his poem he says, “Look, friend, at this universe. With its spiral clusters of stars flying out all over space”(stanza 1). I believe that both Field and Ackerman want us to see the bigger picture. The bigger picture is Earth.
“How can you understand the ocean without becoming one of its intricate fathoms? How can you understand the planet without walking on it, sampling its marvels one by one and then floating high above it, to see it all in a single eye gulp?” Ackerman says this right after she explains what she has seen while flying(paragraph 3). We are destroying our precious place we call home. Day by day there is more and more pollution, more war, more natural disasters, and yet only those who are pure hearted are taking care of the earth. Those people whose “homes” are affected may be destroyed, but their home is also our home. Her point is that we all must help change, so that we might have a future Earth.
We might not be able to go back in time and change the past, but we most certainly learn from it. We can look back on it and think about how we have changed certain things or outcomes and how we can apply it to our daily lives. To stop wars and find solutions to our problems, we need to live in peace and cherish the time we have together here on earth. Ackermans last line stated, “The view from space is offering us the first chance we evolutionary toddlers have had to cross the cosmic street and stand facing our own home, amazed to see it clearly for the first time” (paragraph 4). This is the hope for a perfect world.
Through both Ackerman’s and Field experiences that they have expressed to us, they want us to take into consideration the bigger picture of our home when we are making decisions. As we grow we learn. We learn from experience, and what we have done in the past. Those who made those mistakes in the past prayed that those of us in the future do not make the same mistakes again. We are all going to be adults some day and we will have an impact on the world in which we call home. Both Ackerman and Field need us to realize that we are called to make the best decisions possible for the benefit of the entire world, because it is not just our world but everyone’s.
