A war rages on, sending ripples of panic across industries all over the world.

Speaking of ripples, let’s think about water for a minute, in any of its forms. (You thought of ice dint you?) … well, water in its liquid form, is used as metaphor across cultures. Something that cleanses, purifies, bends, engulfs, falls, drips and nourishes. This transparent liquid is 70% of our planet and is highly sensitive to the movements of the moon… because physics. Sometimes it provides a soothing calmness to take away our anguish and sometimes it is the default dumping spot for most the world’s plastic and sewage waste.

That which gives us so much, also takes. Everything has a dark and a light. Water in its most vengeful or wrathful form comes as tsunamis and floods. Floods are not an uncommon trope in ancient mythology from various parts of the world.

The first avatar of Vishnu, The Preserver in the trinity of Hindu Gods, is a fish that rescues the first man, Manu, from a great flood by creating a boat with the Seven sages and seeds of all types. Noah’s Ark is also a largely similar story. God saves Noah and his family with two of every creature in a boat from a great flood. Within the ancient Meso-American cultures, the destruction of the fourth-sun civilization ended with a massive flood, after which the air-serpent God Quetzalcoatl played a crucial role is rebuilding the new world order. The flood metaphor in mythology wipes out the old and fertilizes the new.

The great flood of today is right now a fire storm.

Tariffs…War… AI…Climate change. The complete wringing of the human emotional system by sending it on a major overdrive. Consistently and repeatedly.  It’s like driving a car on the 5^th gear with no brakes, top of a bridge, that is crumpling into the sea while jet planes are firing missiles at it from the sky.

So…let us now, just take a moment to think about fish. In conjunction with the water metaphor from before. “If you judge a fish by its ability to fly, it will go its whole life believing it is stupid.” – famously said by Albert Einstein…well, I don’t know if he said that. I wasn’t there. It is just largely attributed to him. However, what I do know is that some fish do fly. Or more like glide for a few minutes on top of water. Some flop around in the mud (mud skippers) and some climb up waterfalls with their mouths (goby fish). The tiny fish defy gravity and climb vertically up. So, judge a fish by whatever you want to judge it by.  

Salmon too, swim up against current from the sea to the river. Sometimes they get eaten by bears in the process…sure, but hey, it’s better to get eaten while doing something extraordinary rather than getting eaten while doing something unamusing right?

Now, coming to the part that us humans do best, killing and eating the fish. “Eating fish doesn’t make you a non-vegetarian.”  Any self-righteous pescatarian will proclaim that proudly, because sea creatures apparently aren’t as sentient as other creatures. Most ichthyologists will argue otherwise.

To procure fish, one has to go fishing… To go fish, the most favoured skill you need to have is patience. To wait for the fish that may or may not ever bite into the bait. Hope that the fish will come and not be too disappointed if the catch today, is not as abundant as it was before. To do nothing about ‘the flood’ and be okay with it.