Shark Week

It’s Shark Week again, on the Discovery Channel.  I’ve enjoyed watching some of the shows.  It is interesting, though, that many of the specials about sharks this week have a common theme:  Sharks are people, too!   Instead of looking at them as the “terror of the seas” – we should see them as misunderstood, gentle giants who don’t mean to eat people…it just happens sometimes. 

I am normally a nature lover, in that I appreciate the world around me, and I would never kill something just for fun or meanness.  But I can promise you, if I somehow come in contact with the business end of a shark, OR someone I love is being eaten, I am not going to care a whole lot about what happens to that shark.  Truthfully, I would feel that way no matter WHO was being attacked.  At that moment in time – I would be thinking, “Somebody…ANYBODY…KILL THIS SHARK!!!”  People are more important than animals, period. 

I’m perfectly content to watch sharks from the other side of the Plexiglas in an aquarium.  There is resplendent beauty in their movements and ominous focus in their uncompromising pursuit of food.  Appreciating a shark is very different than wanting to touch one, though, and I have no desire to get up close and personal.

Still, there are people who seem to thrive on danger, and who spend their lives expanding our knowledge of sharks.  They put themselves in harm’s way to get the perfect shot of a great white shark cresting or a tiger shark swimming imposingly in the ocean.  They risk harm to themselves in order to tag these animals, so that we can know more of their habits, and perhaps by understanding them, avoid dangerous contact with them.  If it weren’t for these people, we wouldn’t have shark week at all.

It is not difficult to compare my obesity with the danger of swimming with the sharks.  We are learning more every year about the dangers of each.  We have heard about people who died as a result of both.  The hazard of both obesity and sharks may appear hidden, and then strike suddenly.  Even when the end result is NOT death, there is usually a great deal of pain and anguish. 

Given that there is such danger, why would someone accept obesity, any more than someone would knowingly jump into shark-infested waters?  More to the point, why did I accept obesity?  It wasn’t because I LIKED it.  I hated myself every minute of every day.  It wasn’t because I didn’t know – the dangers of obesity are well documented.