Hold up a mirror and ask yourself what you are capable of doing, and what you really care about. Then take the initiative - don't wait for someone else to ask you to act.
Sylvia EarleRead
I want to get out in the water. I want to see fish, real fish, not fish in a laboratory.
Interpretation
The quote expresses a desire for authentic experiences in nature rather than artificial ones.
Sylvia Earle's quote highlights the importance of direct interaction with the natural world, specifically the ocean and its inhabitants. It emphasizes a longing to experience wildlife in their natural habitat, suggesting that such experiences are more valuable and fulfilling than observing them in controlled environments like laboratories. This plea resonates with the broader theme of valuing nature and understanding its complexities through firsthand experiences.
In practice
During a nature conservation event, to inspire others about the importance of real marine life.
Hold up a mirror and ask yourself what you are capable of doing, and what you really care about. Then take the initiative - don't wait for someone else to ask you to act.
I'm haunted by the thought of what Ray Anderson calls 'tomorrow's child,' asking why we didn't do something on our watch to save sharks and bluefin tuna and squids and coral reefs and the living ocean while there still was time. Well, now is that time.
Even if you never have the chance to see or touch the ocean, the ocean touches you with every breath you take, every drop of water you drink, every bite you consume. Everyone, everywhere is inextricably connected to and utterly dependent upon the existence of the sea.
There is a terribly terrestrial mindset about what we need to do to take care of the planet-as if the ocean somehow doesn't matter or is so big, so vast that it can take care of itself, or that there is nothing that we could possibly do that we could harm the ocean...We are learning otherwise.
No water, no life. No blue, no green.
I have come up at the end of a dive, and the boat was not where I left it. I had to take care of a buddy who did panic. But I was confident the boat would come back.
Mineral cactai, quicksilver lizards in the adobe walls, the bird that punctures space, thirst, tedium, clouds of dust, impalpable epiphanies of wind. The pines taught me to talk to myself. In that garden I learnedto send myself off. Later there were no gardens.
I hope you love birds too. It is economical. It saves going to heaven.
Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.
Storms make trees take deeper roots.
Birds are the last of the dinosaurs. Tiny velociraptors with wings. Devouring defenseless wiggly things and, and nuts, and fish, and, and other birds. They get the early worms. And have you ever watched a chicken eat? They may look innocent, but birds are, well, they're vicious.
The highest treason, the meanest treason, is to deny the holiness of this little blue planet on which we journey through the cold void of space.
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