In our incredibly complex, fast-paced, and conflict-filled world, it’s easy to forget that we’re all part of the same planet, all occupying this beautiful blue sphere in space.

When things feel hopeless, disappointing, or full of hate, we think back to Carl Sagan’s poetic, powerful, and salient speech where he spoke about a photo of Earth sums up our collective experience.

Taken in February 14, 1990, the Voyager 1 space probe turned its camera around to snap one last grainy image of Earth from an unprecedented distance of over 6 billion kilometers (3.7 billion miles).

Watch Sagan describe this pale blue dot, and what it signifies.

The tiny speck of white, that insignificant dot, is everything we’ve ever known.

“Consider again that dot. That’s here, that’s home, that’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. “

-Carl Sagan

Another version of the Pale Blue Dot, via NASA.

If those inflicting harm, spreading hatred, and causing climactic chaos would remember that we not only all share the same planet, but it is a tiny speck of life in the vastness of space, we might get along a bit better.

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