Crash Course on Building a Planet:
How many planets can you name? Eight, probably the usual suspects. But there’s another one worth knowing: a planet that belongs to you alone. Everyone has one, whether they’ve noticed it or not. Mine, I’ve named SIA.Physically, every planet looks the same. However, what makes each unique is how it evolves from the terrain that forms from the life lived on it. To illustrate what I mean, let us walk through mine.
The Sea of Change
Every planet has its landmarks, and mine begins with the Sea of Change, formed the year an eleven-year-old version of me decided city life and day school weren’t enough, and asked for something different. I had no idea how much strength that decision would actually demand.
I was in sixth grade when I left for boarding school, and I met it with more crying than courage. Then, just as the homesickness became more routine than irregular visitors, came what I first mistook for rescue: COVID-19. It sent me home, but it also opened a stretch of uncertainty I hadn’t bargained for. During that time, a meteorite struck Planet SIA – Surprise(Surprise! Surprise! It was my parents, and the constant friction between us. I got through it, barely, with help from people who taught me how to sail rather than sink, and to find my footing when I felt like the world was moving too fast.
In the moments I felt most alone, I learned to look for things that were mine, things that helped me grow instead of just surviving. I didn’t understand half of what I’d lived through until I took Psychology as an elective in eleventh grade, and finally had tangible terms for it.
The Forest of Hopes and Dreams
Somewhere in there, it hit me: everything I do only ever comes back to affect me. So why was I spending so much energy chasing other people’s opinions? That question became the first flower in Planet SIA’s garden of personal growth.
Through it all, one thing kept me moving: hope, and the stubborn habit of dreaming. I spent hours imagining impossible versions of myself, a marine biologist, a sanyasi ready to give up worldly life, all these versions were anything but ordinary. That hope wasn’t self-generated; it came from people and places I owe more than I can repay. Out of that gratitude grew another landmark–The Forest of Hopes and Dreams.
Is the Planet Ever Finished?
As the planet takes shape, the obvious question follows: when is it complete? The landmarks that can still form carry infinite possibility, which means the planet’s potential is infinite too. and that raises a harder question. If it’s never finished, why bother shaping it at all?
Because this was never a race. It’s personal. One day you’ll be on your deathbed, and the only thing left to ask is what you did to give this planet — your life — some significance. So don’t hesitate to keep expanding it, even when the effort feels endless and the reason gets hard to see. We spend so much energy trying to perfect every corner of who we are because, underneath it, what we actually want is to feel good about existing. That’s easy to forget.
Never underestimate what’s possible at the core of your own planet. You hold complete control over its smallest details — from the birth of a single butterfly to a full-blown zombie apocalypse. So the next time you ask yourself, am I there yet? and if the answer, for once don’t get too comfortable. Life will knock you off balance again soon enough. That’s the best part.
If there’s a takeaway in this piece, it’s this: don’t wait for wisdom from someone else. Stop looking only inward. Look at the world around you, and put what you’ve built on your planet to use out there. Enjoy what you have while it lasts, and keep constructing your planet as beautifully as you can.
A beginner’s tip: don’t introduce plastic to your planet.