Finding Peace in a Sea Full of Oil

I am a designer - my life is spent taking pieces of information and weaving them together in meaningful ways using words, shapes, colours, and hierarchy to communicate a message in one coherent design. I work in graphic design, and recently I’ve been using my creative problem solving skills and æsthetic sensitivity in web design. When I see a website online that I haven’t personally designed, I recognize the work of another designer.

The higher the order of design I find, the more skilled I imagine the designer to be; although code and images can be created by machine and entire websites can be created without the blessing of a designer, I can understand an aspect of the designer by seeing and experiencing the whole design. When I look around me in nature I see a high order of design, when I look up at the sky and see a vast clockwork beyond my comprehension playing out in the cosmos, I see the work of the greatest designer. I can’t ascribe the beauty I see in the world around me to simple chance or random iterative processes or I’m selling myself short by believing that the work I do as a designer has no purpose that couldn’t be achieved without my skills, talents, and training.

Lately the news has been filled with a catastrophic oil spill in the atlantic ocean - causing change to the ecosystem there and bringing death and destruction to the plants and animals that live there. Much of the area affected by this oil spill will be altered for a long period of time, if not permanently, but I have a hard time believing that this change won’t provide a way for an entirely new ecosystem to blossom with life in a way that we have never seen before.

When I look at pictures of the oil floating on the water I see colours, patterns, and terrifying beauty. I see how nature has significant power to cause destruction and how little control we humans have over our world. I think of the eruption in Iceland recently that caused such a transformational shift to the ecosystem there and across Europe, that we had no power to stop from happening. It’s natural for us humans to be afraid of this sort of power because we recognize our place as a part of the natural world and such potent displays of power have the means to alter our lives as well.

I imagine that the reaction most humans have to the oil spill is despair and self-loathing as a species because we’re too short-sighted to see how this can bring new life, and how the situation can be redeemed. Naturally we’re afraid of such permanent change when we don’t hold the answers. But isn’t that the point? What if this oil spill, as powerful as it is, is simply a blotch of ink we don’t yet understand that plays an integral role in an artistic masterpiece we have yet to understand in our lives and the story of the cosmos as it unfolds?

When I look at this oil spill I see beauty amidst the destruction, and to focus in on one aspect of the big picture is to miss the message itself - this world, this universe stands alone as one entire piece designed by the greatest designer alive. To look at a spill of oil out of context brings only despair - but in the grand scheme of existence there is beauty to be found.

I hope that every person looking at pictures of the spill can find the beauty in them, and transform that anger and despair into awe and peace. Do I wish the oil spill had never happened and those ecosystems affected by the spill had never been affected? It’s bittersweet, but if this had never happened then me and everybody else would have been robbed of a chance to find beauty in even the most catastrophic of circumstances - and while I know I’m not in control - instead of trying to change the situation or wish it had never happened I think it’s my job to learn to accept the change, and to keep sifting through that murky water for peace.