By Mirella Von Lindenfels, Communications INC Director and Co-founder
The dog is mud. Every 50 or so paces, another earthworm needs saving or has already drowned in the flooded fields. The owls are hunting in daylight. The garden birds are hungry, and the early flowers have collapsed into the quagmire.
Too much ocean is falling out of the sky.
People curse the rain that has fallen unrelentingly, and there is no joy in the favoured British conversation about the weather. It isn’t ‘quite a nice day’, the weather isn’t ‘improving’, it doesn’t feel as though ‘it’s bound to get better soon’.
Too much ocean is falling out of the sky and flooding countries across the planet with far more severe and desperate consequences than in my small part of the world.
Yet this is a love letter to the ocean, which can hardly be blamed for the changes we have wrought to it, forcing these hostile weather conditions. How extraordinary that this ravaged part of our Earth System can still create oxygen, still suck up carbon dioxide and still bring healing and joy.
In January, I stood in a turquoise sea, on white sand, with a strong sun on my face and recharged. The effect was instantaneous, wonderous and lasting. Nothing makes me feel better than standing in the ocean, warmed by the sun.
I love that feeling of being reconnected to the mainframe and boosted back up. I love being connected to that most fundamental of our Earth System services, the ocean, and I love feeling all the negatives of life wash away.
We are willing to protect what we care about, and I have given much of my life to protecting the ocean. Comms INC exists to do just that, and every member of the team has a deep and abiding love affair with the marine realm.
(Our children are surrounded by marine-themed books, toys and clothes and learn the words for shark, turtle and fish before dog, cat or donkey.)
Trying to reconnect people with their own ocean love is at the heart of our work. Good communication speaks to the heart first so that the head will listen. That isn’t easy when what you have to talk about are laws, policy demands, scientific findings, statistics, and data. It’s not easy to convince those with so much to say that they should say less, stop shouting and not bombard with information.
So much to say, so little time to say it, so much urgency to do so.
Yet if we don’t get the attention of the heart, the head won’t listen. There are so many things to worry about, so many things to care about, so many actions to take. They – whoever they are – can’t give everyone everything.
My oft-repeated wisdom is that we spend too much time telling people what we want them to know rather than what they need to hear.
The ocean makes life on this planet possible – my life, your life, their lives.
The flooding and other forms of extreme weather won’t stop if we don’t take better care of the ocean and stop killing it through climate change, overfishing, pollution and many other forms of abuse.
The ocean won’t be able to continue buffering us from the worst effects of climate change if we don’t help build its resilience through marine protected areas, other effective conservation measures and full implementation of existing laws and policies.
I may still be able to stand on a sandy shore and watch the waves lap around my feet, but there will be no life in the ocean if we allow things to continue as they are. No life, no life force, and ultimately no us.
I love the ocean for everything it does for this planet and for what it does for me. I can mentally plug back into that mainframe even in the mud of Sussex and remember what the water on my ankles and the sun on my face feel like. I can welcome the ocean which falls from the sky and connects me to the Earth System, even while lamenting the ravages which have brought the excessive rain to pass.
Sharing my love letter to the ocean is value-based communications and I hope it gives you a moment of reconnection with your marine moment, inspires you to get back to the sea as soon as possible, and to do everything in your power to protect it.
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