Love Thursday: Sphere of Influence


One of my favorite things is seeing people that I love doing what they love. There’s something so inspiring about people truly in their element, figuring out what is important and going after it. This photo is Adam and Katy, our lovely hosts during our trip to Miami. Don’t let their good looks and snazzy sunglasses fool you, I guarantee they are talking about something painfully dorky, like salinity levels (it’s okay if you have to google it) and/or the migratory patterns of alligators.

They are roommates and marine biologists, Adam studies alligators in the Everglades, Katy is a bit more hardcore (sorry Adam) and will do her fieldwork in Australia in a place called Shark Bay. We got to tag along on the boat as Adam did his work, dropping monitors and downloading data and it was so much fun. His life goal is to save the earth from humans, a lofty one for sure, but one that he works on every day in a myriad of different ways.

This is one of the things I love most about Adam, that he practices what he preaches. He carries an eco-friendly seafood selector with him and whips it out at restaurants. He turns off lights and bought an eco-friendly mattress and he and Katy each drive a Prius. Knowing him pushes me to do more, to continue to make changes in my own life and I think that is the way “progressive” ideas become mainstream. Each of us pushing those in our sphere of influence a bit, changing one habit and mind at a time. Someday Adam might find a miracle cure at the bottom of the ocean, but today he is influencing those around him to make more conscious choices, and that’s just about the highest compliment I can give.