Yesterday, I saw a BBC documentary where they were showing the relationship between marine life.

For just two hours every day, the tide goes away and exposes a few rocks that are covered in seaweed. Some crabs live on the shore and they just wait for for the tide and dash towards that seaweed the moment they get the chance.

They try to avoid water and just keep jumping from stone to stone.

And then we see an eel just jumping out of water snapping a crab and eating it.

But still, these crabs just keep going. They know the risks, but yet, for the nutrition, they are just going for it. There is no guarantee they are going to come out of it alive. There are risks, but they do what they must.

And then Octopus also joined the party and started hunting the crabs. But still, these crabs just keep jumping and advancing towards the stone.

Some lose their limbs, some lose their brothers and sisters, some lose their life. But still, many make it to the rock.

And on that rock they eat the seaweed, while chilling under the sun.

And after eating, they have to rush back to shore also because otherwise the tide will come, they will get flooded, and the eels and octopus can easily hunt them.

So there was just a tiny sliver of opportunity of nutrition on a rock that exposes itself only for a few hours a day, and a life form evolved to depend on it.

And then some other life forms evolved to depend on those who depend on that seaweed.

Just like the money multiplier, a small sliver of opportunity, a hope of value, a seaweed turns into a food chain or relationship of organisms that is way more than we would imagine.

None of us would have designed a world where three types of life forms exist just because some seaweed exists on a stone. At max, you will say okay, we only have nutrition for one life to flourish here. Maybe I cannot simulate a world where mare than one life depends on one.

Imagine you are God and you are noticing a rock full of seaweed. How many life forms will you say they should feed? Whatever your answer, I know it is less than what nature did.

With such low nutrition, it was able to create so much. The amount of leverage, the amount of risk-taking, the amount of optimism in all the participants to keep this going is just amazing.

And out there, in our own world, exist so many opportunities, and we can leverage it. We can multiply it. We can create so much complexity out of it.

Nature is an optimist, and I shall become like it.

To think of those tiny crabs just running towards that seaweed, even though they have no guarantee they will make it. Even though they might get eaten by the eels, what commitment, what wonder!

And these eels evolved to travel on stone also out of water so that they could hunt these crabs efficiently. Everyone in this chain is invested so much into this, and when we see the primary source of it all, it’s so tiny.

Less can result in a lot more than you imagine right now, and the optimists get to eat the seaweed. Go team crab!