Joy, Sorrow, and Symbiosis

Coral Reefs and Our Place in the Great Contract

The Washington Post reported this week that coral reefs around the world are experiencing a fourth global bleaching event: the second in ten years.

These are the kinds of headlines that trigger enormous anxiety and sorrow for me, and to be honest, my instinct is to skip over them as quickly as possible. I’m simply afraid of the pain I know I’ll feel.

And this one in particular is a perfect example of a headline I want to skip: it’s a massive, global problem, triggered by systems that I am powerless to do anything about. Up here in the Pacific Northwest, I live thousands of miles away from the nearest coral reef. I am (or at least I feel I am) powerless to protect them, or to change our reliance on fossil fuels that are the heart of the problem.

A coral reef in the Okinawa Sea. Photo by Hiroko Yoshii on Unsplash

Beyond feeling sorrow and a sickening sense of loss, what can I possibly do? My first instinct is to just skip over this new piece of bad news. Move on. Try to forget about it.

But then I remember two important ideas.

Joy and Sorrow

The first idea comes from psychologist Steven Hayes, founder of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), and author of The Liberated Mind: How to Pivot Toward What Matters.¹ Hayes argues that while it’s counter intuitive to most of us, the solution to our emotional pain is actually to turn toward it. To accept it, hold it, get to know it, and name it. How we do that in ways that are safe, meaningful, and don’t send us into a destructive downward spiral isn’t always easy—and something I’ll be writing more about in a future post. (Check back soon!)

But for now I’ll just say that instead of skipping over painful news, I determined to take time to sit down with coral for a while (metaphysically speaking). I let myself marvel at how truly incredible these beings are, and feel sorrow both for the pain they are experiencing and for the enormous loss to us all if they were to perish.

The second related idea comes from poet and essayist Ross Gay, and his wonderful book Inciting Joy. (Please read it, or even better, listen to him narrate the audiobook. It’s glorious.) Gay explores the intersection of sorrow and joy, arguing that the two exist in an essential and symbiotic relationship. You simply cannot have one without the other.

Gay asks:

But what happens if joy is not separate from pain? What if joy and pain are fundamentally tangled up with one another? Or even more to the point, what if joy is not only entangled with pain, or suffering, or sorrow, but is also what emerges from how we care for each other through those things? What if joy, instead of refuge or relief from heartbreak, is what effloresces from us as we help each other carry our heartbreaks?

Gay reminds us that joy emerges from our beloved entanglement with each other. Joy is an expression of our interbeing and mutuality. And when we experience loss, sorrow is a necessary expression of that love. The wonderful (and perhaps seemingly contradictory) truth, is the complementarity of sorrow and joy, and that these sensations—when not muted or numbed by our refusal to feel pain, or our self-medicating turn toward distraction or sedation—are the essential alchemy for our survival. He goes on to say:

My hunch is that joy is an ember for or precursor to wild and unpredictable and transgressive and unboundaried solidarity. And that that solidarity might incite further joy. Which might incite further solidarity. And on and on. My hunch is that joy, emerging from our common sorrow — which does not necessarily mean we have the same sorrows, but that we, in common, sorrow — might draw us together. It might depolarize us and de-atomize us enough that we can consider what, in common, we love. And though attending to what we hate in common is too often all the rage (and it happens also to be very big business), noticing what we love in common, and studying that, might help us survive. It’s why I think of joy, which gets us to love, as being a practice of survival.²

Here, then, is an alchemical recipe for joy and sorrow, in the form of coral reefs.

When you see a coral reef, you are looking at a vast, interdependent, and ancient community. The outer layer is alive, living atop a hard skeletal structure inherited from grandparents and great-grandparents, their ancestral lineage of calcification. The living coral polyps are actually transparent—the glorious colors you’ve seen in pictures, in aquariums, or (if you’re incredibly lucky) while snorkeling in a coral reef, are actually microscopic algae called zooxanthellae (zow-ah-zan-theh-lie), with whom the coral live in a symbiotic relationship. The coral polyps are the homemakers in this relationship, building a safe haven for the algae, who in turn are the bread-winners, bringing home the proverbial (photosynthetic) bacon.

Sheltering fish in a coral reef, Ko Lipe, Thailand. Photo by Milos Prelevic on Unsplash

But coral reefs don’t just provide a safe haven for zooxanthellae. They’re also the ocean’s childcare providers, comprising a safe haven where countless species of juvenile fish and other forms of sea life can grow into adulthood protected from predators. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency notes that coral reefs provide habitat for sea stars, sponges, clams, oysters, crabs, and sea urchins, while also supporting adjacent mangrove, seagrass, and mudflat communities.

Up to 25 percent of all global marine species live in the shelter of coral reefs, making them one of the world’s most complex and biodiverse ecosystems, so dense with life that we are still discovering new species in their midst. All this, and they also play essential roles in protecting coastlines from rising seas during storms.

Hence, their loss could have devastating consequences, with repercussions across the ocean’s entire web of life.

Warming oceans and rising CO2 levels are to blame for the ailing health of our coral reefs. When sea temperatures rise, zooxanthellae are unable to do their job— photosynthesizing energy into food. Stressed by the heat, they are unable to function, and instead release toxins that threaten both their own health and that of the coral polyps. In an act of self-preservation, the coral expels the algae. And in doing so, they lose their color: hence, bleaching. Long term bleaching can be fatal for coral colonies.

This video from Biointeractive explains the process with beautiful imagery.

Coral reefs are also threatened by ocean acidification. As oceans absorb more CO2 the water becomes more acidic, reducing the number of carbonate ions in the sea—essential building blocks of coral reefs. This makes it more difficult for them to grow, reducing their strength and, if acidity levels rise high enough, could actually cause them to break down.

Interbeing and Personal Agency

The Nature Conservancy lists several things every individual can do to protect coral reefs—even those of us who live far away from their tropical paradise.

• If you’re visiting, dive responsibly so as not to damage the reefs, and be sure to wear reef-friendly sunscreen that does not contain oxybenzone or octinoxate.

• Purchase only sustainable seafood.

• Don’t spray fungicides or herbicides on your lawn. Glyphosates found in products like RoundUp run off into our waterways and have been found to impact sea life even at great distances, including coral reefs.

• Conserve water—more runoff means more potentially toxic chemicals getting into our seas.

• Clean up plastics from beaches and shorelines.

• And of course, we can all take action to reduce the amount of CO2 we are releasing into the atmosphere, and to rally like hell for faster, systemic changes to reduce our use of power and to shift to a renewable clean energy grid.

In the face of such an enormous problem individual actions like these may feel vastly insufficient. But collective action does have an impact. And no less important, taking individual action has an enormous impact on the person in question. Action shifts the internal conversation from powerlessness to personal agency.

We recoil from bad news like bleaching coral reefs both because we fear the pain of our sorrow and because we feel powerless.

But taking action, even in small ways, creates space for us to safely hold that sorrow and know that it will not destroy us. Taking action alongside others can even inspire joy. It reminds us that we have agency. That we are not flotsam tossed about by the tides. And it also gives us space to remember that we are interconnected, and interdependent with all life—including coral reefs. Even if we may never be lucky enough to see one in person.

In her book Green Buddhism, environmental studies professor and Buddhist scholar Stephanie Kaza reflects on the how this realization of mutual interdependence and interbeing can become a profound source of agency:

“On the discouraging side, one can imagine an infinite number of relationships, each endangered in some way by toxic wastes, urban sprawl, or climate change. Ecological research has revealed important patterns of interdependence that are clearly threatened by human activities. On the encouraging side, however, every action in the web counts. With conscious choice, people can become a positive restorative force protecting seed stock or buffering creek erosion.”

“Doing science and practicing religion complement each other, drawing on interdependence as the fundamental orientation to existence. Buddhism, however, takes interdependence a step further than ecology. This central law is also stated as co-dependent arising, or mutual causality, and part of this realm is the human mind. Thus, human thoughts, habits, attitudes, values, and perceptions serve as agents in causing or influencing the behavior of other beings and events.”³

Because we are connected, we can cause great harm. But if that is true, the opposite is also true: we can be a source of healing and renewal.

Symbiosis

Symbiotic relationships are one of my favorite things. And to be clear, I’m definitely thinking about mutual symbiosis here—relationships in which organisms have evolved together to support each other in mutually beneficial ways—as with coral polyps and zooxanthellae. (Or as with my husband and I, after 25 years of mutually supportive and occasionally challenging co-evolution.)

But there are two other kinds of symbiotic relationships. The first is commensalism, when one organism benefits from but does not cause another organism harm—for example when a smaller organism is able to hop onto a larger one for a free ride, such as when a fern grows on a tree. The other is parasitism, when one organism—the parasite— actually causes harm to the host.

Some ferns catching a ride on a maple tree in Schmitz Park, West Seattle. I considered including an example of a parasitic symbiosis as well, but every image repulsed me. How fascinating that at some instinctual level our minds know to recoil from a parasite.

Indigenous philosophies can help us think about these relationships more deeply. Coral are amazing, complex organisms. But Indigenous teachings help us remember that they are also sentient beings who belong within an interconnected web of life, where no one species is more important than another. Where each has been given their role to play by the Creator. And wherein we, as human beings, have a covenantal obligation to live in ethical relationship with them. As the younger siblings, human beings rely upon our older plant and animal relatives to sustain us. And in return, we have an obligation to care for them.

Restoration ecologist and Indigenous rights leader Dennis Martinez (O’odham/Chicano/Anglo) famously coined the term “kincentricity” to describe Indigenous land and sea-care practices based on this notion of familial relating. He explains that the understanding rests on the “Original Compact made between the animals and the humans. Animals would offer their lives to humans provided that humans would take care of the plants and animals by asking for permission to harvest, leaving gifts in exchange for lives taken, not taking more than is needed, showing respect for their bodily remains after they were killed and butchered for food, and not failing to regularly care for their habitats and relations.”⁴

The fact of the matter is, we are already in a symbiotic relationship with the world around us—including coral. The nature of our interconnected world makes that a sheer reality. We depend upon the life web of our oceans, in ways practical and profound.

But we are also in the unique position among species of having a choice: what kind of symbiotic relationship do we want to be in? Right now, we’re pretty damn parasitic. But we don’t have to be. The challenge before us is to figure out how we can move into a symbiosis of mutuality.

Mutuality entails attending. It is demands a close attention, awareness, a listening to what the other needs, and discerning how we can best respond to those needs.

Coral reefs give me enormous joy. And the stress we are putting on them gives me profound sorrow. But this joy and sorrow can also be a source of inspired action—because within awareness of our interbeing lies our potential power for change. Acknowledging my obligations within the sacred contract between human beings and other species means I’m simply not able to dwell idly in my sorrow. It inspires, as Gay says, “unboundaried solidarity,” to act in small ways, to intention in large ways, and to find in the midst of joy and sorrow a path toward survival.

1. Steven Hayes, A Liberated Mind: How to Pivot Toward What Matters (Avery 2020).

2. Ross Gay, Inciting Joy: Essays (Algonquin Books 2022).

3. Stephanie Kaza, “Buddhist Perspectives on Teaching and Doing Science,” in Green Buddhism: Practice and Compassionate Action in Uncertain Times (Shambhala 2019): 22-23.

4. Dennis Martinez, “Redefining Sustainability through Kincentric Ecology: Reclaiming Indigenous Lands, Knowledge, and Ethics,” in Traditional Ecological Knowledge: Learning from Indigenous Practices for Environmental Sustainability, edited by Melissa K. Nelson and Dan Shilling (Cambridge University Press 2018): 140.