🚿(under)water

In China the symbol in the center is also known as Tai Chi, the symbol for the two fundamental principles, the positive and the negative, the yang and the yin that are held to lie at the root of all phenomena in the world. The Chinese character for the word yang looks like a fish; it represents the light side, and means the southern or bright side

Part of our job, then, as parents, is to teach our kids to deal with the impermanence of these connections. When Katie and I got our kids their first pet, a brilliantly purple betta fish, we viewed it as being a lesson in death and loss (bettas only live a few years) as much as a lesson in caretaking.

Maybe the real value of leaving your pond for the ocean is to access scale.

For years, I had a selfish lens on the fish in the pond metaphor. I thought about how I could’ve stayed the smartest fish in my pond if I had remained in my pond. I debated and discussed the advantages of being a small fish in a large pond - how it widened my horizons and

cosmic tide — the idea that the whole life of the universe—from the big bang to the collapsing of the universe—is just one wave in an “ocean” that’s beyond space time. What if the comedy and tragedy and all possible beautiful and all potential forms of life within our plenum is just the crashing of a single wave? It is a loop, a wave, a heartbeat,

“Water is versatile. It can be big and powerful, it can quench thirst, it can be healing, it can drown us. It finds its own level, always. That is, water is always seeking balance and has a place it has to go. It can be scarce, it is necessary. We’re utterly, devastatingly dependent on it. It’s beautiful and tragic and it feeds us sometimes. When