You are good enough. You are worthy of love and respect. You are covered in, and in fact pretty much made of dust. You are inhospitable to human life. And thatâs what makes you beautiful.
And you just wrote one paragraph of your therapy-mandated self-affirmation letter. Good for you! Nailed it. Boss planet. Youâre well on your way to completing this weekâs assignment for Dr. Charonâs âLearning To Love Yourselfâ seminar for celestial bodies. Finish this, and you can go back to your regularly scheduled sit-and-spin. Or, orbit-and-spin, as you like to call it, cause youâre so dang funny. Youâre a boss Or-Bit-ch. See? Another one of your classic MARS PUNS.
And orbit-and-spin, thatâs another thing youâre good at! You hurtle through space at a speed of 53,979 miles per hour. That doesnât just happen. I mean, it sort of does, but⌠ itâs complex gravitational forces and balance that youâve maintained for over 4 billion years. Not once have you hurtled completely out of orbit and crashed into another planet, destroying you both. Sure, youâre clumsy, with your avalanches and your dust storms. But you have never destroyed two planets in one go, by tripping slightly out of your orbit. Thatâs what I call SPIN CLASS! Right? Nailed it. 100. straight fire.
And you know what else youâve never done? Hosted an ecosystem so fragile that one organism can completely mess it up in less than 6 million years. Youâre consistent. Youâre still standing. You fit into the same size atmosphere youâve always fit into. Youâre killing it, Mars. Boss bitch. Big ups.
But letâs talk about the elephant in the room. Elephants. Well, mammals. Well, anything that resides on earth. Well, earth.
Recently, youâve been beating yourself up because youâre feeling guilty.
Your buddy earth wants you to be hospitable to their forms of life. Earth wants you to have lots of a specific kind of water. Earth needs it. Earth is counting on you. But Earth is your friend, Earth is not your project.
But youâre beating yourself up about this. Youâre mad that your air is wrong, your soil is arrid, your poles are frozen. You used to be proud of that arrid soil and that crystallized oxygen! You wore outfits specifically designed to show it off! And not just because earth needs to offload some of its pests, youâre feeling guilty.
You think you need to be more like Earth. But a friend who asks you to change yourself is⌠well, is being a silly billy, Iâd say.
And sure, Earth wonât stop writing weird fan fiction and producing fan films and fan comics and game about âterraformingâ and âcolonizingâ you. Itâs flattering, if not a sudden and strange alteration to your geologically-long relationship. Itâs a bit like Earth is MARVIN in on your martian autonomy. Maybe earth should give you some SPACE. Like, on average like 225 million kilometers. But, emotionally.
And perhaps, yes, earth is doomed without you. Oops. But itâs not your job to save anyone, and the fact that you even want to save them means that youâve got a good heart. A good core. Of iron, nickel, and sulfur.
Mars: youâre great. You are a vast and complicated world made of amazing compounds and climates and trajectories. Even if you arenât the savior of Earth and all its parasites.
And youâll always be great. One of the great things about you is your sense of wonder. Venus says your thoughts are boring and dense, but sheâs an air-head (or at least a gas head, am I right?) haha, you ROCK, mars. Oh man, a double!
Where were we? Oh yeah. sometimes you wonder about whatâs the point of it all. It feels lonely, being lusted over by Earth, being bullied by Venus for billions of years. You feel like youâre doing something wrong. Like somehow youâve lost the point.
Well, the point is probably about something like friendship. Realistically, itâs about hurtling through space until the heat death of the universe. But also, friendship. About your buddies, Phobos and Deimos, who do truly like you, even though theyâd have to say that anyway cause theyâre your moons. You should get better at accepting their compliments. They arenât just your sidekicks - theyâve got gravity, too.
Itâs about Earth and Jupiter, your needy neighbors, who like you a lot, even if they keep asking you for stuff. Even about Venus, whoâs just jealous that Earthâs so obsessed with your similarity in size and gravity.
Maybe the point is also a little about about finding some of your own happiness, and your own meaning, and your own part of this void. Youâre great at that.
You have the exact amount of water thatâs right for you. You are the perfect color, and the perfect moistness. Your craters are shapely and your poles are frigid, you hot hot cold planet.
And you love yourself too, good work. Youâre even good at therapy. Love, Mars.
