Creative Thinking: Looking for the ocean

A young fish was looking for the ocean, so he kept asking for information any other fish he met. “Excuse me, he would say, I am looking for the ocean. Can you please tell me where I can find it?” But it seemed that no one knew where the ocean was.
Finally, one day he met an older, wiser fish who answered: “Sure, I know where the ocean is.” “Where, where?” the young fish anxiously asked. “Don’t you see?” the other replied, “The ocean is here, all around you. You are swimming in it.”
But such explanation did not satisfy the youngster. “This is not the ocean, he thought, this is only water.” So he started swimming in another direction, looking for a different, more satisfying answer.
Does this cute little story have a connection with us, with our human situation? It certainly does. Like the ocean, “reality” is all around us, plain and clear, but we are so used to looking at it in the wrong way that we end up never (or almost never) perceiving it as it really is.
Actually, we are not looking at reality in the “wrong” way, because there is no right or wrong here. Every human being has his/her own way of “looking” and, therefore, they get the relevant perception. Nevertheless, if there is no right or wrong way, there is one possibility of looking that can be either “aware” or “unaware”. You can in fact observe the world with your eyes fully open or half-closed. The images you get are necessarily different: The first is clear and well defined, the second is cloudy and distorted.
When you look at the world with half-closed eyes or through incorrect lenses, the vision does not fully correspond to reality. But you do not realize it because, at the moment, it is the only perception available to you.
You are convinced that you are seeing perfectly and believe that the little details attracting your attention are the most important things ever. Therefore you complain about the weather and miss out on the beauty of nature which, in spite of the changing that keep happening, has always something beautiful to offer.
You fix your attention on the unpleasant noise of the traffic but ignore the happy voice of a baby. You don’t hesitate to remark on some rubbish on the ground but never praise the striking colors of the flowers on the street side.
Tiny details? They surly are. But they can also help you appreciate the small joys of life which, if you join them all together, are able to soften — and therefore change to some extent — your vision of life.
The main problem resides on the fact that each human being believes that “he/she knows it all”. Imagine a musician who keeps playing the same note on his instrument. When they ask him why he is not making any variation to the sound, he answers: “Others are incompetent. They keep looking for the perfect note, while I found it.”
Arrogance is one of the greatest problems of mankind. Believing to know it all, remaining steadfast on one’s opinions and pre-conceived ideas make life dull for the individual himself and make it unpleasant for the people who have to deal with him.
The arrogant is unable to appreciate the multiplicity of life’s manifestations because he is rooted in his prejudices. Music must flow and transform itself in order to be harmonious and pleasant to the ear. Ideas must evolve, follow the life flow, the spiritual progress of each one and never stop on the stony beach of immutable opinions.
In life there is never a place or a time where you can say: “I have finally arrived. I don’t need to move any more”, and stop there for good. Life is movement, continuous transformation and anyone who does not accept such truth is bound to remain trapped in his own dull existence.