Recently I jumped into the tropical sea and landed right in the middle of an underwater blizzard. Quite literally.  I found myself swimming through marine snow. This is a dense accumulation of organic material, bits of mucus, barnacle casts, tiny jellyfish, driven as snow by ocean currents. Swimming in marine snow is exactly like driving or walking through a blizzard. Visibility disappears and you are bombarded by snow-flakes but of marine material.  This snow is so nutritious that it attracts  small animals and fish hungry for a meal. And quickly in come the predators the mammals and birds,  drawn in to complete the food chain. Everyone and everything is eating from the buffet. The creatures that normally fear you, don’t care that you’re around. They’ll even shove you out of the way if you come between them and their grub.  It’s a rare and most extraordinary time in the ocean, and particularly unusual in this part of the nearshore tropics. I was of course enthralled and hovered with the ocean gluttons until I got cold enough to think that if I didn’t get out,  I might end up as shark food.

Several days later and 600 miles west,  I was describing what it felt like to swim in a blizzard to some acquaintances over dinner at their house. They were enthralled by the idea, getting caught up in my passion but eager to learn more. Let’s face it,  I’m irish, in love with the sea, and still in recovery as a professor- a deadly combination for the gift of the gab. I lectured, they struggled to get a word in, we laughed and everyone had a grand time.

Later that evening my hosts walked me to their upstairs closet to show me their sets of monogrammed bedsheets. They’d paid a lot of money to have them specially made and they had arrived earlier that day.  They proudly flung open the doors. We gazed on 140 kilos of of whiteness, beautifully arranged in stacks on the shelves. Ok, I admit it,  I was a bit stunned.  Even if I live to be a hundred, I won’t ever have enough beds to use that much linen and would I buy that much even I had those resources?  My first thought was that I was staring at people’s lives being measured in kilos- 140 kilos to be exact. My second thought was, I’m sorry to admit a bit more judgmental- “Wow, I’m looking at a lot of money and a real poverty of life.”   (Ok there goes my positive karma for the month) And then I got the meaning. I had shared my passion for life and given them an experience  of the universe. In return they wanted to share something of importance to them. Ok, so was it was 140 kilos of bedlinen- but it was a start. It was, I realized, what they had to offer on a scale larger than themselves, a closet was filled with a big and expensive sheets and they would share with overnight guests. My hosts took me here  because they too had been searching for an experience of life and connection to the planet. This seemed to be their only way to get it- or so they thought.  And they wanted me to share in it.

People who can find meaning in 140 kilos of fabric can surely also find even more extraordinary meaning in something greater. All of us seek to find our passion to know why we’re  alive and when we do we share it with fellow humans. Can we take this universal feeling and make it about something more awe-some than bedlinens? Can we take the desire to make our guests comfortable with soft sheets, and use it to create comfort and greatness on the planet? Yes I think we can. Let’s start to be more aware of what’s greater than ourselves in our lives and how we use it. Let’s reflect on  how we might create for good and share it.  Let’s think about teaching our children about bringing meaningful and beautiful things into their lives while  showing them that measuring bottom lines in business can include social greatness and environmental profits as well as financial ones.

The economist and nobel peace laureate Muhammad Yunus, and the inventor of microcredit understood the potential of starting with just a little capital and of giving it to those who were the poorest and the greatest risk to bankers. This is an idea we can apply to life-force capital as well as money.

Yunus said   

I went to the bank and proposed that they lend money to the poor people. The bankers almost fell over.

Maybe we scientists and lay people alike, all need to share our knowledge, our  meaning of life on the planet and our enthusiasm for what we experience and do with those who may be poorer in their ability to connect, but who seek as we all do a richer experience.  Just a thought....