Recently, I watched a documentary on Netflix titled „My Octopus Teacher“. Rarely have I watched something so moving, so enchanting, yet so simple in its profound beauty.
It shows the relationship between a man and an Octopus — a surprising event, as Octopus are notoriously known to be antisocial creatures. Yet this man was able to forge a connection with this delicate and intelligent creature. If you have seen it too, you will surely remember the reverence of the scene when the Octopus tentatively reached out a tentacle and touched the human for the first time. I was moved to tears.
What I did not know was that certain species of Octopus live for a little over a year; both the male and the female. When they are about a year old, a male Octopus finds a female and they mate. The female, thereafter, does not leave her den, but gives her entire being to nurturing the eggs growing within her. Once they hatch, her body is spent, and she leaves the den, becoming food for the other sea creatures.
When this happened in the documentary, it was a sad moment. The man cried. You could sense the depths of the loss he felt, the despair of his sadness as he recalled watching the body of the Octopus ravaged by other creatures, helpless to comfort her. Though I empathized with him, still, I could not help the feeling of incredible joy that rose up within me. Tears of happiness welled in my eyes for in that moment, I understood her Life.
An Octopus is born with a sole purpose in life: to multiply. In her multiplication, she contributes to the ecosystem of the waters she resides, playing her part in ensuring maximum equilibrium of that ecosystem. An Octopus knows at birth, instinctively, its purpose on earth. That finality of her death was the fulfillment of her purpose, an image of the perfection of Life. I would like to believe that she welcomed it with joy, and a sigh of relief even, for with her death she was called back to become a part, once again, of the incredible harmonious fabric of the all-encompassing Soul.
We falsely place more importance on the physical aspects of things than needed. We often forget that we all — humans, sea creatures, animals, trees, waters, simply everything — are a part of one and the same. You see, when I saw her body — white, drained of all color, floating at the bottom of the ocean as the fishes she had once played with picked and tugged at her tentacles, eagerly chewing off bits of her — I felt that her soul was no longer there. Those fishes, and the shark that finally snapped her up whole in its wide mouth, needed her physical being to nourish their bodies so they in turn could play their part in keeping the ecosystem alive. She felt no pain because she no longer existed within the physical matter.
There was no need to hold on to the sadness. She was already everywhere. She may very well still be everywhere. Perhaps her Soul divided into parts of itself and melded into each of her eggs, giving back to the all-encompassing soul even more than before. I do not know. What I know is that it is the cycle of Life, and it is perfection, for it came from that which is greater than us. For in all things, it desires to multiply; to be abundant; to create.
And so we must always remember the purpose of our sadness when a physical being passes. To uplift the Soul on the wings of sorrow, guiding it back into the fabric of harmony where it belongs, where it came from. And once the Soul is back home contributing its own unique note to the greatness of all things, we must let go. Otherwise, we hold that piece here on earth, forever preventing it from creating anew.
