Living

..."We sat on a crate of oranges and thought what good men most biologists are, the tenors of the scientific world--temperamental, moody, lecherous, loud-laughing, and healthy. Once in a while one comes on the other kind--what used in the university to be called a "dry-ball"--but such men are not really biologists. They are the embalmers of the field, the picklers who see only the preserved form of life without any of its principle. Out of their own crusted minds they create a world wrinkled with formaldehyde. The true biologist deals with life, with teeming boisterous life, and learns something from it, learns that the first rule of life is living. The dry-balls cannot possibly learn a thing every starfish knows in the core of his soul and in the vesicles between his rays. He must, so know the starfish and the student biologist, who sits at the feet of living things, proliferate in all directions. Having certain tendencies, he must move along their lines to the limit of their potentialities..."

Steinbeck, The Log from the Sea of Cortez, 1951

I have practiced biology for years and still deeply enjoy this passage. It leaves us longing for our passion to run with the ideals of our youth - wholeheartedly into our own grown up reality. I remember when I first held these dreams like a new lover and when my personality, my being and this profession first met and began courting. I look at life and biology now from a point well along the path I chose and am happy to realize that I am still alive and moving ahead; guided by the same love and respect for life that I had back then when I started. I am amazed to know that after all these years and all that I have seen and learned; I still hold the wonder of a child in my heart for life in all its forms.

I can’t help but reflect on this passage by Steinbeck: First of all I notice that they sat casually when they spoke. It reminds me of when we as students used to sit on Friday afternoons in the pub at university and scatter truths like chickens with the philosophical wands of our youth. Then I noticed where they sat. They didn't sit on a soapbox, and it wasn't just an orange crate - it was a 'crate of oranges'. The crate full of oranges led me to think of a collecting bag full of specimens – plucked fresh from the tree of life or drawn wet and salty from the ocean floor. All people that have come to know in their hearts that life streams a river of light through every living, breathing, growing form and that all living things are connected by the same energy that knits the universe together also knows death in their hearts. Donald Peters' woodland painting (above) clearly shows this thread of life that knits all of the animals with the seasons to the sun and to each other in a circle of life.

All of us who are now biologists, as young children (and sometimes as older people) have caused suffering and destruction to life. Perhaps it was in ignorance, perhaps it was inadvertent, and perhaps it was, in our judgment, intended to help. Whatever the reason, some of us even in the very act of committing these crimes against life, could hear a cry of outrage deep inside of us - hollow from our belly. In hearing this cry and in knowing this truth, we are freed to feel our love for the singular wonder of life's energy in all its diversity of forms. In this knowing, we are no more important to the universe than the butterfly that passes by us on its’ mission. It seems strange but through our diminished sense of self and our expanded awe at life we can for the first time truly become great - just by being alive.

This passage also reminds me that all of us, as biologists or bakers or butlers, need to feel things and to find our 'self' at the core of our being to truly live and to learn and to know. We can never find life by observing the pickled bodies or vessels that life courses through. Life is long gone by then. It tangles in the branches of my reasoning that there is just too much energy in life to simply be traded for the cooling of a body when life leaves its vessel behind.

So, I am glad the author sat these people on a properly packed harvest of fruit. I believe that each and every one of us sits upon our own harvest of life – inadvertent or otherwise. Everyone; biologists, healers, and Holy men have all trespassed against life. I remember discomfort as a child watching ants suffer under the sun’s concentrated heat focused through a lens. I remember the pain of learning that flight may be lost to butterflies just by touching their beautiful wings. So often the crime is one of ignorance. It is the other tortures like shooting, clubbing, crushing, or pickling that man can practice with impunity against so many vessels of life that claim the "dry balls" and separates them from those of us that bow to life. Who can do such things to the creatures that we live with, and not hear the voice of outrage that comes right from the core of our soul? Once we stop hurting life and pause to watch with wonder and awe we may find ourselves able to listen more carefully and even to hear the gentle song playing deep within as it rises to join a chorus from the universe.