My family and I just got back from a scuba diving trip in the Caribbean. The Geek and I have been diving since long before our kids and we’ve made a real effort to keep it up. It’s the last vestiges of our pre-kid life as a couple. There are a lot of things I love about diving. I love the silence of being underwater, where the only thing you can hear is the steady rhythm of your own breathing. I love the completely alien landscape of the coral reefs–like sixty feet under water there’s a whole ‘nother planet. I love the complexity of life under water–a few feet of reef can have hundreds, maybe thousands of species in it. All those creatures, just quietly going about their business regardless of my gawking at them like a tourist in Times Square. I kind of even love that no one can talk to me while diving. It’s just me, the fish, and my own thoughts. (What can I say? I’m an introvert.)

I get very philosophical under water. It’s probably all that time alone in my head. Or maybe it’s just that the ocean seems to lessons to teach me. Every dive trip, I try to take away some big life lesson. Seven years ago, diving in the Pacific Ocean for the first time, I struggled against the current for most of the first dive, terrified the ocean would bash me against the rocks. I felt horribly ill-equiped to be down there. Then I noticed that none of the fish were struggle against the current. They were swimming with the current. I spent the rest of the trip thinking about how useless it is to flight something so big, when you can make it work for you instead.

This trip, in a year when I’ve been struggling with professional jealousy (I mean, who doesn’t sometimes, right?), I thought about every body’s dive is different. Eight people can go into the water at the same time and each one of them is going to notice different things. Sometimes I’ll be swimming along and notice something tiny that no one else sees. An odd little algae growing on a soft coral that looks exactly like a flower. Or maybe the bright orange spots of the snout of a Banded Blenny. If I’m enraptured or entranced by the delicate fluttering of the fins of a file fish, does it matter if someone twenty feet ahead of me sees a Spotted Eagle Ray?

Once we’re all back at the resort and talking about the dive over a drink, it’s fun to hear about that Eagle Ray. I may feel a pang of regret that I didn’t see it, but that doesn’t make my Blenny any less beautiful.

So what makes you feel philosophical?