Lessons From a School of Fish

Golden trout at a fish hatchery

I took this image at a fish hatchery in West Virginia – a series of long cold water concrete tanks where baby fish are raised and then released into the trout streams to promote West Virginia’s fishing and tourism industry.

I find the image compelling.  I look at it and see a mass of energy: like-minded souls struggling for freedom, slick bodies colliding with each other, sliding over each other, negotiating, bargaining, fighting, oscillating.

When you look in a fish hatchery, you see that fish have personalities.  Most of them congregate and swarm, slick masses of never ending activity, but some of them, I like to think of them as the introvert group, strike out on their own and swim in solitary.  And some of the more adventurous head to the pumps and jump into the fresh, aerated gushes of water that surges and cycles in.

Where are you in your life, in your work, in your writing, in your dreams right now?  Are you swimming slowly alone?  Are you slipping and sliding and colliding with the masses, not going anywhere?  Are you striking out on your own, aiming and jumping for the freshest, aeriest water – making the dangerous leap that could lead you to a better place, or to a cataclysmic fall?

Where are you?

~Thanks!