January 2014 on the Great Barrier Reef

Lap Around the Sun
Captain Trevor Jackson

The universe is just a giant clock….. tick tock…. tick tock.

The moon revolves around the earth sucking water to and fro, the earth spins on itself and laps the sun once a year. The sun lies on an outward spiraling arm of the galaxy spinning around its central core and the galaxy in turn spins around …well you get the picture. It happens quite uniformly and precisely and we end up back where we started and are at once off again to where we are going, wherever that may be. We live our lives putting misguided importance on stuff…cars, houses , toys for the kids…we want better education, a healthier return on our investments and an early and prosperous retirement….a new RV and then we’re gone and the earth keeps spinning and spinning and spinning.

There’s something about the start of each year, some catalyst, that always has me considering the big questions…………What’s it all about? What’s really important in a universe where we are so fundamentally, unimportant? I never come up with an answer, just more questions and the never ending sense of wonder and a feeling that we are so infinitely lucky to even exist at all on the only known life sustaining eco-bubble in that whole giant clock….

And what a fantastic eco-bubble it is with its grand mountains, wondrous valleys and islands, its oceans of green and blue. The life that exists, the diversity, where did it all stem from, how much of it is there, what haven’t we seen and what’s to become of it all? Sometimes I think we are no more aware of our surroundings than the smallest garden eel hiding in the sand at the bottom of an inconsequential bombie in the middle of nowhere. Other times I think we have the intelligence and innovative flair to literally travel the galaxies and discover the real truth behind some of those big questions…but for me, for now, that garden eel sounds pretty good. I think I might go for a dive to check him out, and maybe ponder some more, while we embark on yet another…… lap around the sun.

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