Happy Earth Day 🌎🕊️

Hello to all my friends—each of you carrying a story, a spirit, and a way of being that matters 🩶

Today, as one human on our shared planet, I'm reflecting on how sustainability is a form of harmony. And to reach that harmony, peace on Earth is essential, and to achieve peace, we must cultivate the instruments of culture—one that is inclusive in language and perspective, offering an alternative to all forms of supremacy: saying no to repression, and yes to a shared humanity.

And on this Earth Day, I can't turn away from the realities in Palestine (esp. of the children), and the intensifying policies of exclusion and conflict accelerated by the US administration.

Although I may not hold political sway, I remain deeply aware that I am the steward of my own culture. Each of us has the power to nurture and pass on a culture of inclusion, diversity, peace and acceptance—seeds we sow today that will grow into the collective voice of the coming generations, uniting at the right time, at a tipping point in the political tides to make a real difference against the privileged and entitled, the exploitative and disharmonious.

Among the many wise mentors and sources guiding us to explore this alternative, one I've been returning to often is 'Chris Hedges Report' featuring some of the most urgent and illuminating voices and conversations of our time. Chris Hedges himself is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and an author, and as I share a few episodes that I found especially eye-opening, insightful and at times, deeply moving, I hope something here may be of use to my friends around the world as well.

One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This (Omar El Akkad)

- Linguistic, euphemistic violence feeding physical violence (Omar El Akkad)

It's not just the general from the invading Army telling you this. It's the anchor on the Nightly News describing a little girl as 'a young lady who collided with a bullet'—what the hell does any of that mean? But it's necessary because fundamentally what you're trying to do is not represent the situation as it is. What you're trying to do is give someone on the other side of the planet who has the privilege of looking away, the language with which to look away without feeling a pang in their conscience. All of this essentially works the moment somebody in the privileged side of the world is able to say yeah that's all so complicated and turn away from it. That's all they're being asked to do and this is the language that facilitates that.

—Omar El Akkad

Where Olive Trees Weep: Processing the Trauma of Occupation (Ashira Darwish)

- Colonisation of the healing world, holistic healing as liberation (Ashira Darwish)

I wanted to share the wisdom of what I learned about holistic healing, about how the body heals, and realised that the healing world is also colonised, and that everything that's enforced upon us in terms of physical healing is Western medicine, and in terms of mental healing, it's all also Western ideas about what therapy works on the people who are colonised.

So I started working in liberation, in psychology going back into the tools that helped me, which were all tools that came either from Asia, or from the Palestinian heritage, or came from the Sufi heritage that I got from my family.

And I started Catharsis Holistic Healing to give that back to the communities.

—Ashira Darwish

Democracy doesn’t exist in the United States (Chris Hedges)

- Resistance for our own dignity—for who we are

Our left has been so decimated and destroyed, I fear that we don't have the forces of resistance that can create the kind of space, social equality and liberty that should be fundamental to an open society. So no, I'm actually very pessimistic. That's where I fall back on my religious tradition, where it doesn't matter. You come out of the black prophetic tradition, if anybody understood the world around them and the forces against them, it was Black America and the black prophetic tradition, but they fought anyway.

And they fought anyway because it wasn't what they achieved empirically, it was who they were, it was their own dignity, and we have to protect our own dignity. The soul is real. If we don't stand up against these rapacious forces of radical evil, our soul will die. And we may not win, but we must save our soul.

—Chris Hedges

A friendly reminder: Wherever you source your facts and insights, algorithms will often feed you similar content, gradually guiding you deeper into an echo chamber. So it's important to actively seek out a diversity of perspectives—whether through panel discussions, debates, and especially by listening to our friends and loved ones who may see things differently with openness.

The forces that narrow our perception run dark and deep, and are often quietly embedded. But through dialogue, through conversations held as a wide embrace, we create the space needed for transformation—however small, whenever it's ready to unfold.

In solidarity, reflection, and quiet resolve from Japan ☮️

Ryo

📸 Photography Credits

- Ghazal, a 14-year-old from Khuza’a village near Khan Younis City, says “I have no childhood, I only live in terror.” On the very first day of hostilities, her cherished home was reduced to ruins by a bombardment. She and her family sought refuge in a UNRWA school in Khan Younis where hundreds of displaced families were sheltering. November 23, 2023. UNICEF/UNI463111, El Baba

- Palestinian children wait to receive food cooked by a charity kitchen amid shortages of food supplies, as the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas continues, in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip. March 5, 2024. Mohammed Salem, Reuters

- Children playing in the Shati refugee camp in Gaza City in 2007. Ruth Fremson, The New York Times

- A member of the Palestinian Civil Defence carries a wounded boy rescued from the rubble of a home that was destroyed in an Israeli airstrike on October 9, 2023. Eyad Al-Baba, AFP

- Palestinian children light candles during a protest near destroyed buildings in the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah, May 25, 2021. Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90

- Children stare at the destruction following an Israeli strike in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip on November 7, 2024. Eyad Baba, AFP

- The 2025 World Press Photo of the Year Award depicts Mahmoud Ajjour, nine, who was injured during an Israeli attack on Gaza City in March 2024 [Credit: © Samar Abu Elouf for The New York Times]