Listening: Dixie Chicks, "Set me free" and Dashboard, TPYHCTFTM

Thinking an amalgam of thoughts inspired by a solitary visit to the family- and couple-friendly New England Aquarium and Boston public transportation. Bear with me for the disjointed stream of thoughts.

I don't want to be trapped in the cage of human conventional society. I'm being smothered by the "adult world" and its attempts to make me fit into its boundaries. I still want to change and question and wonder. I don't want my curiosity and awe to leave me. I don't want to know everything and I don't want to stop being impressed.

Like the Little Blue Penguin frenetically shaking its left tagged flipper (female), I'm trying to shake off the morays I can't adhere to -- proper rules for the right love, beauty, conversation. I'm struggling to force my personality and self into this world that is already so full, so manipulated and manufactured, that it's turning my thoughts radical. IT IS OKAY to feel alone. AND TO LIKE IT. I just have to ignore society to believe it.

Public transportation in a foreign city feels like "The Dating Game" gone horribly awry; I'm the only player and am confused by the rules. Always looking around - hatching (note: "to hatch" verb, intransitive to engage in eye sex or intense staring) - searching for someone - to be my friend? To reaffirm that I'm a friend-worthy person enough or somehow merituous to stare at in return? But then I remember that I enjoy being alone.

How can we be so egotistical to try to control everything? Education is good, but entrapment is not. And I still don't believe we've figured out how to teach caring from the heart and passion for the world, let alone its environment. Of the hundreds of zoos and aquariums and science centers in the nation, there are possibly ten that offer their forced inhabitants as many creature comforts as their paid visitors. Tears boil in the back of my eyes when I see two sea lions rapidly traverse a 20 ft long tank, narrowly missing the fake rocks scattered about for a dose of realism. What about the fish they'd be chasing? What about the dung they'd leave on the rocks? What about the loud barking sounds that always accompany sea lions? What about the tangy smells that identify sea lion territory from miles? Where's the reality of my childhood in Monterey, CA, that saw free swimming sea lions as natural? And what about the reality of penguins waddling around next to a giant tube of fake coral reef and tropical fish? My heart cries for the kids who stare all googgly-eyed at these animals they've never seen before, that this has to be their first, uninspiring introduction to the world that beget them millions of years previously. The world that has been slowly, quickly squeachled by us.

This world is not the one I learned about saving. It's already changed, altered so very much. Its people are satisfied with plastic, contained versions of reality, displayed for them in neat disposable boxes with easy explanation placards (but not overwhelmed with too much information!). Young children are rewarded for their indignant screams and whines by being pushed, unapologetically, to the front of any line. Adults are rewarded for their indignant screams and greed with respect and "position" -- but only if they don't have to work for it. Quickly it's clear that our handlers, like the penguins', don't think we can handle too much and force feed us Orwellian messages laced with fear and unnecessary promises.

I just want to be a revolutionary zookeeper. Though I long to simply be a human being not trying to dominate, own, win, or have conquest over the world we're all apart of, it's not possible. It's not possible anymore to try to bury into the fabric of green struggling to remain functional. The world is such that now, whether we want to or not, we must become stewards of sustainability. I refuse to resign myself to letting the New England Aquarium and its breed of sub-par facilities educate my species.

One of my IAs, Jonny, wrote when I felt helpless about genocide in the Sudan:
"But at the end of all those little nudges to give a damn, it seems that silently, but strongly, society has tacked on one addendum, 'While you should definitely give a damn, it's not worth giving your life.' And I think that's where the problem comes in and what allows injustices to continue. People in today's society seem incapable to find something for which they'd give their life. I don't know what I'd do it for."

I'd give my life -- all its time, efforts, heart -- to saving the environment. Lofty ideal, yes. Something I can achieve in my lifetime? Maybe some tiny modicum of change - recycling, talking about it with friends, awareness, beach cleanups. I refuse to allow the human pandemic of apathy to consume me, too. So even if I don't change a damn thing, I must believe that it's worth trying. The world could self destruct in my lifetime or after and my actions might have no impact whatsoever on that; I don't care. I need to know that I'm not being a guilty bystander and letting my passion pass me by, waving forlornly from the future I push it into -- "I'll follow my dreams next year, when I have the time and money." I need, for my own sanity, to feel like I'm following my heart, recognizing what it's screaming at me. I need to face my Personal Legend (read The Alchemist, please oh please).

This strongly held belief has been in my heart for a long, long time, but now I'm making it concrete, to myself. I'm not going to get comfortable with my station or make excuses. Yes, I'm still going to work for a not-so-environmentally perfect company, but I really mean it when I say I'm determined to make a difference from the inside. Because preservation wouldn't work if everyone were doing it the same way. And even if I fail, at least I'll fail in search of my dreams. As the alchemist advised the boy, "...no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second's encounter with God and with eternity."

You can litter if you want to, because maybe saving the world isn't your calling. But my adrenaline's, my heart's, my mind's telephone of inspiration is ringing off the hook and the green caller can't wait any longer. And I've finally recognized what I'm willing to give my life for.