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something else about the EcoSphere that bothers me. It could be that this little item is being sold in catalogues as a Christmas gift idea. A very expensive gift idea at that. It goes for up to $500. You can buy one, set it on your desk or your bookshelf, study it, observe it, maybe meditate on it. The manufacturer boasts that the shrimp can live for more than five years.
    They even got Carl Sagan to hype the EcoSphere when it first came out. Quoth Sagan regarding the organisms in the globe: “You find yourself worrying about them, rooting for them.”
    The commercialization bothers me a little. So does the notion of “owning” a little world. We can’t really “own” life. The idea of holding it in the palm of your hand is a bit too much. It deifies man in an age when we would be better served by humility.
    I also find it a little unsettling that you could find yourself pulling for or even identifying with a shrimp. That scares me. The creatures in the EcoSphere only live for five years or so. That’s a pittance in the whole scheme of things. Then again, in the whole scheme of things, seventy or eighty years is also a pittance. Suddenly, the shrimp and I have more in common that I care to acknowledge. I’m not trapped inside a glass ball, but I’m not likely to leave the planet any time soon either.
    But the more I think about it, the more I realize that the EcoSphere itself doesn’t bother me. It might actually be a good thing for everybody to have one of these little items. Looking at the EcoSphere from your desk chair is a little like looking at the Earth from the Moon. You feel kind of sorry for those little waste-producing shrimp. They are not long for this world. So an EcoSphere could serve as a constant reminder of our mortality and of the delicate balance amongst living creatures. It might raise our consciousness a little.
    And in the end, that’s what I find most troubling—not the EcoSphere, but the realization that our consciousness still needs raising. Too many people still disregard the concept of our own ecosystem. And because we haven’t acknowledged the fact that we are all part of a very fragile ecosystem, we fail to treat the environment, the other creatures in the world—even other human beings—with proper respect and concern.
    I probably will never own an EcoSphere. The idea of owning a world still bothers me. But I’m glad somebody invented it. It makes you think. And while it’s not very pleasant to identify with a shrimp, it’s probably a pretty important thing to do from time to time.

 
Little Arms Around My Neck
     
    For Kathleen
     
    After a marathon day of opening presents and nonstop play, you have collapsed exhausted on the living room floor. It is now my job to get you up and put you to bed. Christmas is over.
    I try to wake you up, but you can barely open your eyes. “Carry me, Daddy,” you say, and as I pick you up, you put your little arms around my neck.
    You are almost three, and it occurs to me that there will not always be little arms around my neck. So I am taking nothing for granted. There is not a single little hug that doesn’t go straight to my heart and give me a thousand reasons for being.
    Sometimes in the middle of a hug, you threaten to “eat me up”—which consists of a tight hug accompanied by some loud chomping noises. When the chomping noises begin, it makes me think of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are , one of your favorite stories. It contains one of the best lines in all of literature.
    Early in the story, a little boy named Max tells his mother he’s going to eat her up, and she sends him to his room for being such a wild thing. Then Max imagines a land where he becomes king of all the wild things. The other wild things love Max and don’t ever want him to leave. “Oh, please don’t go,” they say. “We’ll eat you up, we love you so.”
    That’s what comes to mind when I feel little arms around my neck and hear little