Flattened by the News of the World…Revived by the Wonder of the Natural World

Exactly one week ago today, I was flattened by the specific news of the president of the United States testing positive for the coronavirus. Everyone in this world is struggling right now to keep their head above water, searching for solid ground in the chaos, working hard to maintain balance, perspective, and hope in the news of new challenges, new catastrophes every day.

And such blatant disrespect for science, for truth, for intelligence, for the common good, knocked the wind out of my sails.

Many words have already been said, more will be said. That’s not the message of this post.

The message of this post is how to find safe solid ground again when you’ve been flattened by a tsunami.  And I found it, rather immediately, in following yet another recommendation by so many friends.  I watched the new documentary film My Octopus Teacher.

And the sense of wonder, the reverence for the beauty (and fierceness) of our natural world, the perseverance of filmmaker Craig Foster diving into the cold waters of a kelp forest off the coast of South Africa, every day for almost a full year, the deepening of connection and trust between a human species and an invertebrate species, buoyed my spirit and healed by heart.

I was already familiar with the super intelligence of octopuses (plural from the Greek, not octopi if the root were Latin) from reading The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness by Sy Montgomery.

But I wasn’t fully prepared for being touched so deeply by the beauty of the octopus’s ocean home and the wonder of the trust (love?) between the octopus and the human.

Dive in yourself, and feel buoyed and healed.