There’s a website called neal.fun. On the website is a “game,” where you can scroll down from the surface of the ocean, all the way to the deepest part of the Mariana Trench. Along the way you see the different creatures that live in different zones.
You descend from the upper regions into the twilight zone, where the water is getting deep enough to block the light from penetrating the water. Then the midnight zone, where everything turns black. You keep descending into the abyssal zone and finally reach the hadal zone, which only exists in the ocean’s deepest trenches.
In the complete dark, in the freezing temperatures, in the immense pressure of ten thousand meters of water pressing down on them, creatures live their lives. The grenadier. The chiton. The snailfish. The cusk eel. The hadal amphipod.
Strange creatures with strange names and even stranger appearances. The transparent skin. The lack of eyes. The feelers and nubs. They live and move and do their version of breathing farther below the ocean’s surface than Mount Everest stretches above it.
I think about us and our souls. Do we have trenches? Do we have strange depths that can go completely unexplored our entire lives? What shadowy creatures live inside our hearts? And what would they do if they were ever brought to light?
It takes courage to plumb the depths. In 1960, two men descended in a submarine, braving the crushing pressure and the freezing cold, all the way down to the Challenger Deep, the bottom of the Mariana Trench and the deepest point of the entire ocean.
What kind of courage does it take to dive into the depths of the soul? Is there anyone who can go all the way to the bottom and survive?
