“The Forgotten Ones: A Message from the Wounded Earth”: by Daris Kandadestra

Every day, we receive and send messages. Through the chime of a bell, a whispered voice, a smile, a handshake, a lingering gaze, a letter, a phone call, and countless other ways. Some arrive in silence, others through words. All of them are messages—our way of sharing thought and feeling with one another.

Today, a message has come again. But this one is unlike any we have known before. It does not come from human voices. It comes from nature. Yes, nature has sent its message in a different form.

In truth, the warnings were given long ago—through signs we chose to ignore. We went on with our own desires, indifferent to the world that shelters us. We say the Earth has grown old, when in fact it is we who have forced it to age too quickly. Nature merely responds to the signals sent to it, pushed again and again toward its own destruction.

There is only one kind of being on this planet that does not destroy but restores: the green plants, the forests. They recycle poisoned air into breath, barren soil into fertility, summon rain from the sky, filter and store water, and offer endless acts of quiet goodness to the Earth. And yet we—humans, the so-called vicegerents of this world—are the very ones who lay it to ruin.

So the message arrives carrying with it the stench of decay and the scars left by human greed. It does not come alone. It brings sorrow and suffering in its wake.

So hasten to mend what has been broken, while there is still time—before the messages of nature’s wrath are sent once more. For nature is growing weary of the way humanity treats this world.

“Awaken, awaken, O you who were appointed as God’s vicegerents upon this Earth – before the final message is written in irreversible ruin.”

Riau, Sumatra on December, 7th 2025