The Fishbowl Effect

An a-ha moment, no less! I finally figured out why the grass seems greener proverbially on the other side. Oh it does & here's a thought...imagine all of us in our own little fish bowls (like the ones you'd keep a goldfish in?). These fish bowls are like your own little universes-thoughts, prejudices, vices, virtues, world views, belief systems. No matter how we justify it, we know we all have them. Also imagine that these fishbowls do not appear visually to the self but others can see them. I-can't-see-mine-but-I-can-see-yours.

Now the rest of it is simply physics. Follow closely. When you look inside a fishbowl, things look miraculously grand and enlarged...you always perceive the fish inside to have made it in life. The fish inside the bowl has it all. But alas, for the fish inside (say fish 1), your fishbowl is sending her the same notions of your grandeur. This is the crux of a lot of unhappiness in the mid-life years. If only we'd see inside our own bowls or better still see ourselves through the eyes of the envious others.

Here's a simple solution...think of the glass fish bowls as soap bubbles. Here's the thing I love about bubbles- they're magical, they're full of every shade of hope, they live a finite life of promise and then they die. Pop. No more illusions. Just the nacked bare reality. 

Nobody has a formula for happiness or success or contentment. If you feel it, there's no need to have an overwhelming urge to broadcast it to the whole world.  That's the whole point, isn't it? Never underestimate the trade offs people make to become who they are. Looking at a result without these trade offs is a dangerous game. Either be the blind fish who was just so happy in her own fish bowl or be the naked fish that saw truthfully what she saw. Here's goes another thought, which would you rather be?