A Human Bowl

Imagine for a moment a cute little goldfish.

Your cute little goldfish.

His name is Mr GlubGlub and you love him very much.

You buy all the nice little interesting fixtures and plants to make his home as nice and interesting for him as you can. But Mr GlubGlub just sits in the corner and stares at nothing, not moving much. Obviously you'd be worried for your little friend and would make your way hastily to the internet to find out what is wrong with him and how you can make him enjoy himself more.

Now imagine that someone is watching you, like you watch Mr GlubGlub.

At first you may find this reassuring (I certainly did), but then you might find it a little concerning. The whole concept of "care for yourself as someone you're responsible for" is not a new or original idea by any stretch but one that I wanted to elaborate on a little.

This thought experiment has given me the ability to think a little more laterally in the last few days.

I spend most of my time thinking about how I can improve myself. How I can be better, how I'm not doing enough. How I'm not enough as a person. This is exasperated even further in social contexts with self talk like "your not interesting enough to talk to" or "your wasting peoples time expecting them to have pity on you to talk to you just so you can feel better". But only thinking in terms of better I'm starting to realize is flawed thinking.

Back to Mr GlubGlub. Would you ever sit there and think "Geez, he's pretty slow. Why isn't he trying to be faster. This fish sucks". Take it further, say Mr GlubGlub isn't feeling so well: "Dang why is he just doing nothing. I hate this fish. This fish is a waste of space". These would be ludicrous statements and ones which would make anyone who heard them think you were psychotic. However we talk to ourselves like this all the time and most people consider it normal.

Any healthy, caring person would know that Mr GlubGlub has value and is loved for simply being. He doesn't need to do anything to deserve love and to be admired. His basic existence is something that is admired. If he were to spend his entire life in that bowl doing fishy things no-one would hold that against him and better yet everyone who passed him by would stop to admire him.

All of us know that as people we are cursed with an ability that Mr GlubGlub will never have to concern himself with; meta-thinking. Being able to look at another fish and saying "If I work really hard I might be able to be like that other fish too". "I would be better if I weren't like I am now". "I should just jump out of my tank and die, I'm not good enough at being a fish". "I don't deserve to eat today, I'm not skinny like other fish". "I don't deserve to talk to the other fish, I'm probably boring them".

Any time you talk to yourself, or make a decision about weather something is good or bad, don't always tie it back to goals. Ask yourself first if it would be a reasonable thing to say to Mr GlubGlub. Not saying you shouldn't have goals for yourself, or hold yourself to a slightly higher standard than that of a goldfish. My only aim here is to ensure that you're kind to yourself, and value your human experience over continuous improvement. Allow yourself to enjoy moments and live a good life.

Your goals should help facilitate this, they shouldn't make your life actively worse.

Create for yourself an environment in which you thrive, surround yourself with people who genuinely want to improve your life, who admire you and who you admire, and enjoy this brief moment together.