What does it mean to live in 'business as usual'?

The Destiny of Earthseed / Is to take root among the stars.

These are the words of Octavia Butler, from 'Parable of the Sower'. We are Earthseed.

What do you think of, when you read or hear these words?

Take a moment, just to ponder what they mean for you. And what thoughts, feelings, images, arise.

I read them on Sunday just gone, while waiting for a train in, from and out of north London. I'd been inspired by Sabrina Meherally 's sharing of community Liberation Maasi's collective reading of Parable of the Sower, realising I'd never read this one of Butler's pieces.

And I was transported.

I immediately went to thinking of people such as Musk, intent on pursuing a future for humans beyond Earth.

Or at least, some humans. And a whole article, or series of them, could be written on that alone.

I was reminded of all those science fiction stories that look to the stars and dream of our futures as amongst them. I was reminded too of Philip K Dick's short story Survey Team, where we reach Mars hoping it will be our Planet B. Only to discover that it had been our Planet A.

But as I sat with the words, they revealed more to me.

• We are already among the stars, living here on Earth. Earth is not separate from, or outside of, the stars. Our destiny is this planet.
• As ancestors to future generations, and remembering how ancestors are often imagined as being stars or amongst the stars, our own destiny as ancestors is to take our place in the skies amongst our own lineages. And so, what do we want our legacy as ancestors to be? What is our destiny, as ancestors?
• We are ourselves made of stars. We are stardust. All on this Earth is stardust. Our destiny is intimately rooted and interwoven with our matter and the matter of all on this Earth as being of stardust. We are all connected. What is our destiny in this universe of interconnection, and shared matter and spirit?

The reflections felt grounding, rooting of earth, rather than the dreams of faraway skies and planets. A reminder of our responsibilities to this planet, to each other, to future generations.

As I sat with the words more, more still came.

Monday saw the rise of the full moon - a supermoon at that. And with this full moon, came the Jewish festival of Tu B'av. A festival of love. A festival where Jewish women would, in ancient times, dress in white and dance joyfully under the full moon in the vineyards, as the grapes of late summer were harvested. I'd also, a few days before, just started reading The Place of All Possibility: Cultivating Creativity Through Ancient Jewish Wisdom by Rabbi Adina Allen. It was a reminder both that life is inherently creative, and also that there is wisdom in this complicated ethno-religion of mine.

Knowing this while reading Octavia Butler's words, I wondered then if our destiny is to return to the cycles of the moon, and cyclical living governed by the sun and moon and stars. To bring our modern lives back in line with the cycles of life.

The train arrived, the Kindle was put away. I boarded, and found a forward-facing window seat.

The landscape sped away from us, although it was of course us that was speeding away while the land stood still.

The thoughts from the platform had boarded the train with me. They wandered next to Bruno Latour, author of We have never been modern, and his critique of humanity having ever entered a modern period. I'd started reading him after he was mentioned in a YouTube video analysis of the film The Prestige. He argued that elements of the pre-modern continued to exist alongside our belief of having entered first a modern and then a post-modern era. Indeed, that elements of what we considered to be 'modern' had existed in the pre-modern era. He argued that the defining feature of modernity was the conceptual separation of nature from culture, more than anything else. With devastating consequences.

I was taken next to regenerative and kinship worldviews, and the story of separation. To Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgtrass.

In that moment, Octavia Butler, Bruno Latour, Rabbi Adina Allen, ancient Jewish traditions, Elon Musk, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Philip K Dick – all were in conversation with each other, with me. And we were all in conversation with where the moon was in its cycle around the earth, with the season of late summer and the fruits and vegetables and grains being harvested not only elsewhere but right here, in the fields the train and I and fellow passengers were travelling through. Weaving and dancing together.

Questions of destiny sat with me.

• What is that destiny, if it is rooted among the stars?
• Is our destiny rooted in some place in the distant future, some future goal, that we march towards?
• Is it something that exists intrinsically within us, pushing us forward and towards and through the unknown?
• Is it something we each craft for ourselves? Is it collective?
• What is our destiny as a human species, as a planet, as life?
• What if it's not a singular destiny, but destinies? And what if they can't be reconciled with each other?
• ...And what if we can no longer see the stars?

Words take on their own meanings when they come into contact with different readers, different listeners, different watchers. Those meanings are dependent on the worldviews we're each carrying within us, our lived experiences, our histories, lineages, wh. They're shaped by we've most recently been reading or watching, what's happening in the news, and in both the outer and inner landscapes we traverse.

There are strong collective senses that humanity, life on this planet, is currently living in times of great disturbances, of storms. There is also a strong sense that these disturbances aren't new for many. That it is only now, that they are lapping at the feet of the privileged who have previously been shielded from them, that the storms are starting to gain more attention.

How does our own individual and shared sense of destiny, of humanity's destiny, influence our organisational work? Our life's work? Our worldviews? Our relationship with self, and with each other, and with the more-than-human? Our sense of agency?

The idea of 'business as usual' is both a reality and a fallacy.

We continue, we persist. We still need food, money for the bills, to love, to fight. In some sense, our destiny is simply to survive. To keep going in the work of each day, for what else is there to do, or can we do?

And yet, there is no 'usual'. Or at least, it is not the 'usual' we believe it to be. As Bruno Latour challenges us: we have never been modern. Our bodies are still rooted in the principles of life. And 'God is Change', as Octavia's own fictional Earthseed religion tells us. Which means: life is change. Our destiny as earthseed – as seed of this earth – both is and isn't within our hands. We both do and do not have agency. We both can and cannot surrender to and shape our destinies.

My train arrived at its destination, and the important work of tending to family took precedence.

Business as usual.