While on our vacation last year in Puerto Rico, my family and I spent some time gazing at an aquarium in the hotel lobby. This sea urchin was in the tank, and while it looks like it’s in a perpetual apoplectic state and at first gave the creeps, the more I looked at, the more found it to be incredibly beautiful. While it was kind of shy hiding between the rocks in the tank, every so often it would move and just hover in one spot defiantly claiming downstage center.

Sea urchins look as if they exploded out, but stayed intact. They are nature and life at its most haphazard, yet completely organized into a creature that commands attention, while floating quietly by.

I have a feeling that in the “society” of the sea they are like the girl in high school who wore whatever she wanted, who sang loud, was a bit of a loner and didn’t care and loved herself just fine. She thumbed her nose at the conventional and was never one to care what others thought.

And we all secretly admired her for it.