Look at this stuff, isn't it neat?

The irony zoomed past me as I got tunes from "The Little Mermaid" stuck in my head the night before Andy and I went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Contemplating our afternoon later on Friday out on the sunny, breezy oceanside deck of the aquarium, I ashamedly realized the significance. I had just seen some sebastians, flounders, scuttles, and flotsam and jetsam, too. Coming to the end of my list, I demanded to see some mermaids. And maybe a sea witch or something. Yeah, that would complete the afternoon. But seriously, all in all, we saw a lot of creatures. A lot. From tiny to enormous, smooth to roughly crusted, furry to spiky, leafy, squishy, gooey and, of course, fishy, I felt oddly like these creatures were putting things into perspective for me. It's not just the diversity that is beautiful. As Andy I sat watching the kelp forest tank, he remarked on how some of the fish were content to remain still and float and drift with the movement of the water back and forth in unison with the seaweed. The sea dragons and sea horses had the same lethargic looking inertia to them, horses hooked onto thin grasses just bob bob bobbing in currents while the leaf looking dragons just afloat and drifting, sometimes even bumping into each other, their appendages blending and getting lost together. The jelly fish also seem to drift, pulsing through a serene starless space with only existence on the "nerve net," the closest jelly fish equivalent to a brain (jelly fish also don't have a central nervous system). A crotchety looking bittern seen in the flamingo exhibit didn't move from his sagely perch in the 3 or so hours between our first and second viewings, and the giant octopi remained wedged between rock and glass as long as possible. On the other hand, there were also frenetic seeming small fishes darting back and forth, like the schools of sardines that, flashing and glinting as a large united body of individuals, followed an unseen path through the open waters between hammerhead sharks, dolphinfish, tuna, and also barracuda that were all too interested, every once in awhile scaring the body and inciting an explosion of sparkling fishes in multiple directions before they reconvened into their tight-knit defenses. And the Magellanic penguins "flying" beneath the surface rarely paused long enough for a decent picture. They were awfully cute though. In another category entirely, the sea otters reminded us of their mammalian nature, seeming to play in their grooming practices, floating on backs and pulling their hind flippers up to their tummy almost in a fetal position. Though it looked like a cozy and safe way to curl up, they were actually keeping their poorly insulated feetsies from getting too cold in the water.

I think it is clear I got a lot out of our day at the aquarium. It reminded me of the stresses I tend to put myself through without really needing to, the things I complicate my life with that are more just games my mind plays with itself than efforts toward growth and productivity. And isn't that what is driving these creatures in some way? Or at least, that is what we ourselves are interested in learning about them. We learn the basics: development from birth to adulthood, what they eat, how they defend themselves (or hunt), and how they reproduce. Surely these are the basics to all life, and not just what we as humans think are important. In a metaphorical sense, growth and productivity are also immensely important to being viewed as successful. And so I ask myself, am I successful?