While we’re here.

I came across this photo on Quora. It was taken in 2018 by National Geographic photographer Ami Vitale, capturing the final moments between the last male northern white rhino, Sudan, and his devoted keeper Joseph Wachira. Sudan leaned into his longtime caretaker, an ending neither dramatic nor heroic, just deeply human and painfully real.

Sudan’s death wasn’t a better mythology unfolding. It was the final verse of a story we failed to write well enough. They tried everything, from armed guards, fundraisers, to science. The species is now functionally extinct. That is the hard truth.

That image brought back a conversation I once had with a farmer named Fred. We were in his field talking. He said something I’ve never forgotten: “Earth’s magnetic poles could flip. A meteor could hit this tiny ball we live on. The climate could shift for better or worse. We still need to pick up trash when we see it.” It wasn’t philosophy. It had no promise attached. It was just practical.

We already know how the big story ends. The sun will burn out. The planet will die. And humans? We might send ourselves off early, maybe because of a pandemic, AI, debt, war, or sheer shortsightedness. Or maybe we’ll leave the planet entirely, scatter beyond Earth. All possibilities. None guaranteed.

The northern white rhino is gone. Our own species might follow someday. That’s not a tragedy or a comfort. It’s real.

What matters is what we do while we’re here. We don’t pick up trash because someday we’ll save the whole planet. We pick it up because it exists now. We don’t guard rhinos or care for people because the universe notices. We do it because it’s the right thing to do with the time and space we’re in.

Today is July 5th. The fireworks have ended, the banners are down, and the noise has faded. We’re still here. There’s space now, not for grand gestures, but for small decisions grounded in reality.

So here’s to the 5th of July and to whatever work is in front of us, quiet, careful, real.

Happy 5th.

-Ray