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04.02.01 :: 2:50pm PST My brother keeps his fish in an aquarium. As I sit and watch them before I go to sleep each night, I often wonder if they're content to live like they do. It's not a bad life really. Their food is plentiful. Although they've never had to flee from predators, they still scatter every time someone enters the room. There are no droughts or other threats to their existence. Although the fish don't posses the brain power to realize it, life in a aquarium is far more secure than life in the wild. The one inescapable truth is that they live a caged existence. Their world only extends to about 30 gallons of water. They spend much of their day swimming back and forth against the glass constantly looking for a way out of their glass cage while unaware that escape would surely mean their deaths. I'm not so sure that we don't live in similar cages. Sure, there are no glass walls confining us but that doesn't mean we live without limits that are every bit as confining. Without being conscious of it, we all live within certain bounds. People stay in careers that aren't satisfying simply because they believe they have to. Changing to their dream jobs would often lead to an uncertain future and often a cut in pay that seems unbearable. Maybe their limits are geographical. People live often live where they are simply because that’s where life has led them. Moving or adventuring out would again lead to uncertainty. How would you find your way around a new place? The thought of having to meet new people secretly terrifies most of us. It’s hard to say where our limitations come from. Often it’s just a matter of us following the example of people who came before us. maybe our parents and grandparents lived and worked in the same places most of their lives. Unlike the fish, we know about the dangers that exists beyond our cages. We see them nightly on the television news. Murders and beatings in the big cities, earthquakes in California, tornadoes in Kansas, and hurricanes in Florida, bombings and political unrest in the third world all serve to reinforce our fears of the world beyond our daily lives. Somehow the fact that we don’t experience these events lead us to believe that if we stay in our cages, our world will be safe. The world beyond our daily experiences must surely be the one we see on the television. After all, we saw the film of the blown up building or of the murder victim’s body being loaded into the ambulance. These images don’t necessarily accurately reflect the world beyond or cages but seeing them makes them real enough to feed on our fears. Eventually, we decide to accept the mundane life of the fish. We wait for our food flakes to appear in the form of a regular paycheck. To ensure this supply of flakes, we settle into a routine of working each day with the promise of a few days on the weekend to relax. If we’re fortunate, we’ll get a few weeks each year to go on a vacation. Event then we’re likely to choose something that will keep us within our protected world. Maybe we visit friends or relatives or go on a cruise or some other prepackaged Club Med type vacation. Too much adventure would mean too much uncertainty. It’s important to remember the dreams of our youth. Before we were old enough to learn of the dangers beyond our cage, anything was possible. Did you want to be a fire fighter, artist, or a musician? Or did you want to explore Europe, Russia or maybe China? At first thought those may seem like childish notions now but are they really? Maybe it’s noting more than your fear of what lies beyond the invisible care that you’ve built for yourself. Life is too short to live like a caged fish. |