A year ago, I started my year abroad in Washington, DC. With family in the area, I had a sort of home-court advantage, but it was still pretty nerve-wracking to move across the Atlantic with no friends nearby. Unless you count the guy who also came to DC from my home university, with whom I’d exchanged a few messages, largely unenthusiastic on his behalf, in the run up to the first day of class. I’d come to learn that that was just his clinical yet well-meaning style of texting and we’d come to be good friends. But that’s neither here nor there. I ended up absolutely loving my time in DC. Studying International Relations two blocks from the White House was surreal and the city itself is filled with such character. I’d rallied and mourned over elections and politics in the capital of democracy’s capitol. It had quickly become a home. One I’d hoped to return to—after a minimum of four years. I left the States in June, feeling like I was the last person to make it onto the life boat. A day or two after I flew out, the national guard was deployed in Los Angeles. It was surreal to watch over the news. At that stage, ICE had detained and deported thousands of people — thousands of Americans—and met those protesting with illegal, state-sanctioned violence. I’d become completely disenfranchised with the US and the fascistic autocracy it was barrelling towards. While I was grateful to get out of there, I regretted not being able to do more for the communities victimised by Trump’s ego boosting power plays. And now, each day seems to bring more horrifying headlines than the last.

But the state of affairs in the UK isn’t too much better. Parliament seems to be making any decision that will either get them money in the bank or favour with the one percent. Whether that be regressing on trans rights in the supreme court ruling on the definition of ‘woman’ or the recent online safety act which is so clearly internet censorship and personal data acquisition stacked on top of each other in a trench coat pretending to care about protecting the children.

And the most heinous governmental stance of the UK in recent history being its complicity in genocide. Facilitating arms sales and proscribing peaceful protestors as terrorists when the real terrorists, by Webster’s definition, appear to be coming from inside Number 10. And the world? It seems to be filled with an unfathomable amount of hatred and evil. Bombs dropped on hospitals and a man-made famine and still no consequence to the perpetrators. The apocalypse is now.

During my time in the States, I was lucky enough to visit Maui, Hawai’i. As I drove through the breathtaking landscape, I caught a glimpse of Haleakalā, the world’s largest dormant volcano, in the distance. The volcano is responsible for the creation of the eastern part of the island over two million years of lava deposits. For so much of its past, Maui has been covered in molten rock and ash, yet I would not describe it as desolate nor destitute. It thrives with nutrient-rich, fertile soil and a population that lives on the very land created by Haleakalā. There’s a plant, the ‘ōhi’a lehua, that is the first flora to grow on lava flow. Vibrant bundles of red emerge from a barren scene, stirring imagery not dissimilar to that of the poppies in Flanders field. Life not only persists through such trying conditions, but comes back stronger and more spectacular.

Right now, it feels like the world is going through multiple, concurrent volcanic eruptions. Yet there is some consolation in knowing that the world will not end. We will not go extinct. The people will spur on revolution on behalf of those who did not make it, just as activists and those speaking out are doing now. There will be a reckoning for what is happening and those responsible will be held to account. Institutions will crumble and, in their stead, better and stronger foundations will be built. Flowers will bloom again.

The greatest of the ‘Big Five’ extinctions was caused by a volcanic eruption and its aftermath. Life has and will continue to endure. Humanity, inevitably, will triumph.