I’m still down with this sickness, although I continue to improve. When I’m lounging, resting and watching videos to pass some time, I find myself drawn to relaxed videos of various aquarists and hobbyists building small aquariums for shrimp and small fish suited to peaceful planted freshwater aquariums. I miss my aquarium. Sometimes I miss it a lot. It was, for a time, very low maintenance and successful – a thriving ecosystem that required very little work to keep up. One move, then another, disrupted my stable little underwater paradise, and things got messy, chaotic, and required a lot more work. For awhile that overcame me, and I let the algae take over. Then, noticing a favorite fish was actually still thriving, my renewed interest and enthusiasm – and real regard for that fish – carried me through several restorative projects.
We moved, at last, to this little house. Life feels more settled, but the aquariums (at that point I had three) had no ideally suitable location. Every place they could be placed was a compromise that reliably resulted in more work, more inconvenience, or… more algae. One tank got broken when a bookshelf being moved into place shifted and fell onto it. The fish were saved. The damage and water and mess were cleaned up. I retired the other small tank, and focused on my 29 gallon freshwater community. Peaceful and beautiful, and seemed to be thriving (although my betta persisted in leaping from the tank at odd hours, which was a pain in the ass and very stressful for us both, I’m sure). One day, as I happened to be standing nearby, the silicon seals simply failed. The front glass panel fell to the floor and water went everywhere. My Traveling Partner heard me cry out, and rushed to help me. The fish were saved – into a bucket, with what remained of the water from the tank. The small tank was pulled from retirement long enough to house the distressed fish. I couldn’t bring myself to keep on saving fish from the floor, and felt rather as if the circumstances were a clear sign that this location and this time in my life were not suited to keeping an aquarium. As I’ve done with other pets in my life, I allowed the circumstances to direct my decision-making. I don’t have an aquarium now. (Or, any other pets, actually, for various reasons and due to my thinking about such things changing over time.)
…But I’m home sick, trying to rest and get well, and I keep finding myself drawn to videos of aquarium setups suitable for small spaces, small fish, small creatures, and low maintenance practices. I sigh to myself as I sip my coffee. Do I really want an aquarium, or am I daydreaming and missing what once was? For the moment, the difference is too small to matter. I still don’t have a really good location for an aquarium, even a small one, in this house. I don’t have the time, the energy, or perhaps even the will to provide the care and maintenance even a small one would reliably require (and the small ones often need more attention more often than a big one does). I still love a beautiful aquarium, and there are so many kinds!! Aquascaping has a lot of variety. It’s a beautiful hobby. I even indulge myself, as I consider the matter, allowing myself the fun of planning out what I would need to do a small aquarium… Maybe just 6-10 gallons? Shrimp and snails? Maybe a betta? Some neon tetras? The exercise reminds me that this is not a “cheap hobby”. The tools and materials (long before livestock is considered) are somewhat costly, most especially if chosen with care based on best suited to the concept, well-respected brands, quality goods, and aesthetics. I quickly found myself looking at a “budget” that would require $200-$300 dollars, before I even started pricing livestock and plants. Yeesh. Do I want it that badly? Enough to deal with a compromise on location, the work involved, the potential for more work if there was a tank failure, and the possibility that this was merely a passing fancy stoked and amplified by sick day boredom? Enough to push it to the top of the list of things that need doing, for which there are limited resources? No, no, and no. I don’t actually want to build a new aquarium… I’m just missing my old one. Human primates are weird.
Do I need an aquarium? No, I don’t. Am I lacking something in my life that having one would truly fulfill? No, it would be an unnecessary luxury that comes at a significant cost. Do I even truly want one? No, I don’t think so; I just want to be well, and free from constraints on my comings and goings, and limitations on my energy. I just happen to be filling some portion of time with engaging videos about a topic I have a connection to, and take a lot of pleasure in considering.
I finish my coffee, thinking about what a useful reminder this is that chasing some momentary yearning is a very human thing, but it can easily get out of hand, taking me down a path I didn’t plan to walk, and without real benefit from that detour along my journey (maybe). Do I love a beautiful planted freshwater aquarium? I definitely do. I remember my Dad’s aquariums when I was a kid, with great fondness. I remember mine, and what a haven it was for me in a difficult time (it was originally undertaken as a means of providing healthy background noise that would reduce my nightmares, and it worked well for that purpose for the years that I needed it most). The stress (and lasting responsibility) over the safe healthy lives of the inhabitants and the terror and panic when something went wrong (whether a power outage or a tank failure) are not so welcome in my life. I still miss my aquarium. I miss the fish and the lush green plants moving gently in whatever current there might be. I don’t miss the work or the stress or the worry when I’m away. I won’t be getting a new aquarium any time soon, because I don’t really want one. I definitely don’t “need” one.
Human primates are wired to go after what they want: food, sleep, money and love, and endless things in between. It makes sense to pause and give some new yearning a moment of real thought and reflection. We only have so much time to spend, and only so much available in spendable resources to acquire some new thing. Our yearnings are not necessarily tied to our actual needs in any practical way. Good thing we have minds and critical thinking skills – ideally we put those to good use.
Are you hearing me on this? It’s a metaphor. When yearning overtakes me, I pull my focus to other things, I seek out a sense of sufficiency. I examine the thing I think I am yearning for with great care looking for what may be driving that (it’s rarely the thing I’m yearning for, itself, which nearly always masks some identifiable practical need or another than can be more effectively addressed quite differently). I breathe, exhale, and relax. I enjoy this moment here, as it is, quiet and calm and pleasant (in spite of lingering flu symptoms). This is enough. No aquarium required. 😉
I smile and think about Spring. Soon enough, the weather will be warming up, and it’ll be time to get out into the garden. There are plenty of creatures there to watch and wonder at, and all manner of lovely plants and flowers to tend. My effort will be well-spent there. It’s enough. Soon, I can begin again in the garden I have.
Evening Light 