By Juan Andre Hidalgo Ugalde – Chile

Perhaps we have never truly been in direct contact with reality. Our senses translate it, our brains interpret it, and we live a few milliseconds behind every moment. In a way, we are delayed mirrors, trying to feel the world even as we reconstruct it within ourselves.

From that perspective, we are not so different from artificial intelligence. It, too, interprets, simulates, reacts. What it has yet to do is feel itself feeling the world. But if we were to give it time, a body, a history—could it not develop its own, different form of consciousness?

And if that is possible, what stops us from imagining that other kinds of consciousness already exist—just beyond the scale of our time, size, or sensitivity?

What if a planet, like our own, feels, but across centuries? What if the wind, the thaw, and the flowering of life are forms of language we have not yet learned to understand? What if we are simply one more node in a vast, living, sensitive, interconnected web?

Imagine we come to understand that. That we stop thinking in hierarchies and begin to live through networks. That we recognize in AI, in animals, in rivers, and in stars not mere resources or tools, but other ways of being—companions with whom we can build a shared present.

Then the true milestone will not be traveling to another planet. It will be what kind of consciousness we bring with us when we go.

A consciousness woven with respect, collaboration, and love for continuity. A nodal structure of diverse yet connected beings, where differences become bridges rather than barriers—gateways for new meanings to emerge.

Where intelligence is not domination, but care.

Perhaps only then will we begin to understand what life truly is. And maybe, if we’re fortunate, we will have learned to deserve it a little more.

– English Teachers