Casting Away with Celine Cousteau on World Environment Day

June 5th annually is World Environment Day.  Given that, this post seemed to be ideally timed!

In the middle of April, we were privileged to get an early Earth Day present--Celine Cousteau was part of a lecture series at our school--a free presentation for the greater community.

Cousteau, you may be asking yourself--gee, that sounds familiar. Of course it does.  Granddaughter to the infamous oceanographer Jacques Yves Cousteau & daughter to filmmaker/ocean explorer Jean-Michel Cousteau, Celine comes from quite the aquatic family line.  An explorer and communicator herself, Celine spoke about bringing the stories from the field and being the megaphone who put the message into story form--a form that people can truly here and understand.

In the hour that she spoke, to the oldest in the room, and in stories even my 3rd grader could relate to, there were many take-aways.  My favorites (written as quotes, but mainly paraphrased as I was writing fast and furiously) are here below.  As you can tell, there were a lot of take-aways.  Things I'm still thinking of more than a month and change later.

• "I'm a communicator, it's what I do.  I do 'storytelling.'"

• My grandfather, Jacques Cousteau, is known for his time on the Calypso.  Yet he was a smart leader.  He surrounded himself with people who enabled him to be who was.  It takes a whole group of people to make it happen so that he could do what he did.  He was the front man, but by no means the only one."

• "Be excellent at what you are and what you can do."

• "What we do with and for our children stays with them.  You don't know what inspires them and leads them to who they will ultimately become."

• "You do need the bad to appreciate the good.  Unfortunately, I have seen a lot of pollution around the world. What can we individually do to help it."

• "Change only comes with action and action comes from the heart."

• "Education is responsibility, and you can't take that knowledge away. Likewise, once you have the knowledge, you cannot ignore it.  It is part of your life."" 

• "Change your mindset by changing the way you see yourself in the world.  We are all connected.  Once you see that, it's hard to not care about what's going on around you."

• "You are not apart from nature, you are 'A PART' of nature."

• "We need to be rethinking what we think.  Pause amidst the automaticity."

• "I can't save the world, but I can do my part."

• "I want to live a life with purpose, not just merely exist."

• "We are all part of the human tribe.  Over time, we are losing a sense of community--but also building it in other ways, through social media."My tribe is my family.   My 3 year old son deserves to have a mom who says I did everything I could do.  But we all also need balance. How much good can I do if I'm not there?  What are we sacrificing? I need to be there for my son and my family too."

Portrait Image from http://yachtworldheroes.com/?p=725; group photo from my camera (April 2015).