#SOL18 3-7-18 Sylvia Earle, Gandalf, and Ring-Bearers

A book by Claire Nivola called Life in the Ocean: The Story of Oceanographer Sylvia Earle caught our imagination early in the school year, making Sylvia Earle our class hero, and “You can’t care if you don’t know” our manta as we work to raise awareness among our peers and families in landlocked Colorado about ocean plastics. Up until at least Earth Day, we will spend some time at the end of every day working on POP!, our Plastic Oceans Project. It is the time of day with the most energy and focus.

Being in the presence of pure idealism is a glorious blessing. We revel in the wonderous realities of the universe--the interdependence within ecosystems, the alien other-worldliness of the octopus, the leviathan battles of colossal squids and sperm whales, the miraculous creatures living in the 95% of this earth’s oceans that hasn’t been explored, as well as the complex microbiomes in out own gut. We spend our days curious, amazed, and humbled.

So often being in the presence of pure idealism is also what makes the contrast painfully startling. More and more of late I feel like the scales have fallen from my eyes, a veil has been lifted, when at the end of the school day I am thrust back into adult media. The news assaults me with dystopian images of man’s attempts to destroy it all: from rolling back the clean water act to threats of nuclear annihilation. The contrast is breathtaking.

I lament, how can we take for granted the miracle of our existence?

“Earth as an ecosystem stands out in the all of the universe. There's no place that we know about that can support life as we know it, not even our sister planet, Mars, where we might set up housekeeping someday, but at great effort and trouble we have to recreate the things we take for granted here.” Sylvia Earle

Too often we treat this planet as if we have somewhere else to go. The hubris. Several times recently I’ve had to pause while teaching, when the wonders that surround us call to mind unbidden thoughts of man’s almost celebratory destruction.

As my ten to twelve-year-old friends work earnestly every day to make a difference for the planet, and it feels like at the same time too many powerful adults in the world’s capitals are ready to sacrifice it, I need to know that there is hope, so I will leave you with this from The Fellowship of the Ring.

Frodo says, “I wish the ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.”

And Gandalf replies, “So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. There are other forces at work in this world Frodo, besides the will of evil. Bilbo was meant to find the Ring. In which case, you were also meant to have it. And that is an encouraging thought.”

Thanks to Brainy Quote.