#3 : Being a Fish in a Pond
Hey there!
Hope you're having a great day, and as always I hope this serves as a comforting space to you. It's Friday, which means it's time to once again drop the anchor into the sea. Funny enough, today's topic involves fish (Figure 1.1).
So this week I spent some time with a friend (Unnamed) who recently graduated from FIU. I haven't seen this particular friend in a long while, and I was incredibly happy to re-establish our friendship. Because of our prolonged disconnection I asked how life was generally going and what her next plan was. My friend gave a strong sigh and said he/she didn't know, and he/she felt overwhelmed because of it. As I stated when I started this blog, I believe this is a normal result of our transition to the "real world", but I was still confused as to why we commonly feel this way. Then something happened.
At one part of the conversation I told my friend about my blog and how I am sailing this hypothetical sea. I can't quite remember but we somehow started talking about an all too familiar advice, "Be a big fish in a small pond". As soon as I thought about it I started thinking about the relationship between the sea and the pond and what the fish meant for both ideas (Figure 1.2).
"Be a big fish in a small pond" (Figure 1.3) means to try to stand out in a place where it wouldn't be so hard to stand out. I was constantly told this in the early college years, and while I was flattered to be considered a potential big fish I would argue that FIU is far from a small pond. FIU is home to some incredibly intelligent students and the reason I was able to do so much is because FIU provided an excellent pond for me to swim. FIU also boasts 50,000 students and some significant accomplishments so yea, not really a small pond.
Anyways, my main problem with the quote isn't the size of the pond of the fish, it's the actual existence of this hypothetical pond. I support the idea that everyone should find what makes them different and unique but maybe the pond concept makes this search primarily about others and not yourself. This is because you'll constantly compare yourself to what that pond expects of you and whether you feel like a big fish or a small fish.
After thinking about it for a bit I applied the Applied Paradox theory. I found the pond to be troublesome when you graduate because at that point your pond is dumped into the vast ocean of "real life". You'll quickly find that the ocean doesn't care about anything, meaning that there are no expectations and you're completely free to do (almost) whatever your heart desires (Figure 1.4). If you followed the pond advice then what will push you at that point? Comparing yourself to everyone in the ocean and meeting life's perfect expectations seems like an unhealthy route to take to say the least.
So instead I propose to change the pond advice to this:
This new sentence tries to shift the focus from the pond to the fish (Yourself). This won't take the difficult journey away from us but at least it can help us focus on what's important. It also tries to emphasize that we should live relative to the ocean, not the pond.
Now this is just a perspective of this idea, I understand it's being told with good intention. It's ideas like these that I think are worth examining, hence why it's in this blog.
See y'all on Tuesday.
~ NoChillNerd
Hope you're having a great day, and as always I hope this serves as a comforting space to you. It's Friday, which means it's time to once again drop the anchor into the sea. Funny enough, today's topic involves fish (Figure 1.1).
Figure 1.1 : My attempt to draw a fish
At one part of the conversation I told my friend about my blog and how I am sailing this hypothetical sea. I can't quite remember but we somehow started talking about an all too familiar advice, "Be a big fish in a small pond". As soon as I thought about it I started thinking about the relationship between the sea and the pond and what the fish meant for both ideas (Figure 1.2).
Figure 1.2 : Gotta love derailing conversations
"Be a big fish in a small pond" (Figure 1.3) means to try to stand out in a place where it wouldn't be so hard to stand out. I was constantly told this in the early college years, and while I was flattered to be considered a potential big fish I would argue that FIU is far from a small pond. FIU is home to some incredibly intelligent students and the reason I was able to do so much is because FIU provided an excellent pond for me to swim. FIU also boasts 50,000 students and some significant accomplishments so yea, not really a small pond.
Figure 1.3 : Basically
Anyways, my main problem with the quote isn't the size of the pond of the fish, it's the actual existence of this hypothetical pond. I support the idea that everyone should find what makes them different and unique but maybe the pond concept makes this search primarily about others and not yourself. This is because you'll constantly compare yourself to what that pond expects of you and whether you feel like a big fish or a small fish.
After thinking about it for a bit I applied the Applied Paradox theory. I found the pond to be troublesome when you graduate because at that point your pond is dumped into the vast ocean of "real life". You'll quickly find that the ocean doesn't care about anything, meaning that there are no expectations and you're completely free to do (almost) whatever your heart desires (Figure 1.4). If you followed the pond advice then what will push you at that point? Comparing yourself to everyone in the ocean and meeting life's perfect expectations seems like an unhealthy route to take to say the least.
Figure 1.4 : It's pretty big
So instead I propose to change the pond advice to this:
Be a good fish to yourself and the ocean.
This new sentence tries to shift the focus from the pond to the fish (Yourself). This won't take the difficult journey away from us but at least it can help us focus on what's important. It also tries to emphasize that we should live relative to the ocean, not the pond.
Now this is just a perspective of this idea, I understand it's being told with good intention. It's ideas like these that I think are worth examining, hence why it's in this blog.
See y'all on Tuesday.
~ NoChillNerd
