Fishbowl Mentality
Why Most of us are stuck in routine and sup-optimal lives.
A few days ago, I ran into Danielle, a former classmate of mine. We had been quite close in the university but upon our graduation, life happened. She got married and settled down and I was into my own things. We tried to keep in touch at first but busyness and age would not let us. Eventually, our friendship fizzled into the ‘hellos’, the ‘his’ and the ‘happy-belated-birthdays’ estranged friends send to each other.
Nowadays, I don’t usually get to see many old faces from my past. So when she asked me to join her for a drink, not for the world was I going to say no. In the blazing heat of the Molyko sun, we sat down in a nearby bar for a couple of beers. I had to keep in mind I was now talking to a married woman, so I trod carefully. I could no longer make any inappropriate jokes that might easily be misunderstood, no more insulting the boyfriend as I did back in the day and certainly no hitting on her. At first, it was weird because I was basically dancing around needles and I could tell that she too held herself with considerable difficulty. However, as we talked, she started to open up and I even felt relaxed (well the beer helped). We chatted about any and everything and soon she began telling me about her long-term goals and other things she was working on. When she was done, I exclaimed, “Wow! your fish tank got sharks.”
Let me explain. Back in the university, my friends and I had a few running jokes and most of them centred around sharks and fish tanks. “My fish tank needs sharks,” meant one was too big for their current situation and had to move on to bigger and better things. Anyways back to the story.
When I uttered the catchphrase, I did not get the laughter and sally that usually accompanied my remarks and which I was indeed expecting. Instead, she asked me, “Hesley, do you know what happens to fishes in tanks?”
“No, I don’t.” I replied and frankly, I did not care to know.
“When you place a fish in a bowl or tank, it grows up to a certain size and then stops growing relative to the size of the bowl. Said fish would otherwise have continued growing had it been its natural habitat, a river, a lake or a sea. So, no my tank doesn’t need fish. My fish needs to be out in the sea.”
That is when I recalled one of the biggest reasons why Danielle and I had not spoken in such a long time. She had become an obnoxious know-it-all who, like everyone’s least favourite aunt, turned every joke into a lecture.
We talked on for a while after that and when it got too late to keep chatting, we said our goodbyes and went our separate ways.
Long after Danielle and I had parted ways, I kept thinking of what she said. I recognized a universal truth to her words. Something I was perhaps guilty of to one extent or another. We are not very different from fish. Whether we end up in a bowl or the sea is up to us.
You see, like a lot of other people, I was guilty of creating a comfort zone for myself. I was stuck in a routine, doing the same things every day, going to the same places and talking to the same ilk of people. It was easy to stay there. My comfort zone, like most comfort zones, was predictable, safe and not at all terrifying. What I failed to realize though, was that, like that fish in the bowl, I had limited my mental growth. I had placed upon myself an imaginary mental boundary within which I hoped to thrive. Luckily for me, my problems were easy to identify and fix. I now try new things, meet new people, gain new experiences, you know the whole shebang.
What about you? Are you willing to explore the benefits of stepping out of your comfort zone? Perhaps it’s about making a career or business move, or working on your spiritual growth. Maybe it’s going back to school, or getting out of a wrong relationship or just changing your daily routines to ensure a better life. The point is, don’t stay exactly where you are, doing exactly what you are doing for the rest of your life, lest you stop growing as a person. It may not seem like a big deal, and perhaps it is not but one thing I know about growth though, when it stops, decay begins.
