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We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly, and in fits and starts.

Developing a collective sense of ourselves as Earthlings - native inhabitants of an old, durable planet - may bring reassurance in a time when so many human systems that once seemed robust are showing signs of fragility.

We are creatures shaped by the planet's rocky logic. Each of us is, most fundamentally, an Earthling. On the beach, pebbles of Ordovician dolomite prattle with Archean granite, their combined memories spanning half the age of the Earth.

I barely registered the landmark that life on Earth had just passed: A few self-replicating molecules, after four billion years of random walks shaped by nothing more than trial and error, had learned how to measure the infinitesimal dimming of light from trillions of miles away with enough precision to infer the transits of minuscule invisible

Minuscule wobbles in the motion of massive suns - changes of less than one meter per second in the velocity of a star - were betraying the size and mass of invisible planets tugging on them. The precision of these measurements defied belief. It was like trying to use a ruler to measure a distance a hundred times smaller than the amount the ruler