The oldest thing on Earth....is Earth

A lesson from my daughter that hit me right in the soul

The other day one hurried afternoon on our way from one engagement to the next, my daughter asked me one of those trick questions kids tend to be so good at:

“Mom, what’s the oldest thing on Earth?”

I paused, genuinely stumped. Dinosaurs? Nope.  Rocks? not quite.   Ancient sea sponges? Guess again.  I threw a few more guesses into the air before finally conceding defeat and asking her to tell me.

She grinned and said, “Earth.”

And I just sat there, blinking at her….because she was utterly, awe-inspiringly right.

We spend so much of our time racing forward—toward goals, deadlines, appointments, healing, becoming, transforming. We see the Earth as the stage we hustle on....and in many ways, it is. But if you really pause and feel into it, its so much more than that. It is the ancient wisdom keeper. The quiet witness. The one who holds us through every chapter, every shift, every version of ourselves.

And in that moment, when my daughter answered with one simple word - “Earth”......I felt all of that land in my body. It stopped me in my tracks.

The oldest thing on Earth is Earth.

Billions of years old, and still here. Still spinning. Still growing things. Still holding oceans and erupting volcanoes and blooming wildflowers. Still making room for every kind of story.  Yours. Mine. Hers.

Every single day, we have the privilege of walking on something ancient. We breathe air shaped by millennia of life. We drink water that has cycled through clouds, rivers, and veins for longer than we can fathom. We are held by a living, breathing elder that has witnessed extinction and rebirth, silence and song, destruction and regrowth.

And somehow, even after all that, she still lets us lie in her grass, cry into her dirt, and dance under her stars. She still paints the sky for us in stunning sunsets and cosmic light shows like the aurora borealis. She gives us rainbows after the rain, as if to whisper, “There’s still magic here.” She offers beauty without asking for anything in return. It’s like she’s saying, “I know it’s hard sometimes. Here, look up.”

I think we forget how magical that is.

We forget that Earth is not just where we are existing, but what we’re part of. She is the original ancestor. The constant presence. The backdrop to every laugh, every heartbreak, every coffee date and barefoot morning.

So when my daughter, so sweetly and casually said that, it felt like a reminder I didn’t know I needed.

We are not separate from the sacred. We are walking on it. Breathing it. Living in it.

And maybe, just maybe, if we slowed down enough to notice, we’d remember that even on our messiest, uncomfortably tragic, most uncertain days……we’re still being held by something ancient and wise and beautiful beyond words.

So here’s to our Earth. The oldest thing we know.

Our most patient witness.

The greatest teacher we overlook.

And the most beautiful trick answer I’ve ever heard.

Thanks, kid. <3