Fish out of water

Pain, fear, hardship and all those crappy things are the greatest motivators known to any living organism. If you think back to the first prehistoric mass of slime that crawled out of the ocean onto dry land to evolve into what you see when you look into a mirror, you can bet the slime’s motivation wasn’t any lofty idealism or optimistic dreams of the future but rather, its motivation was because it was hunted or starving to death and had to go somewhere new.

That’s all fine & dandy. But even the prehistoric slime must’ve eventually reached some comfort zone, or at least some stage of life where it decided it was safe to get laid & have babies and sprout a new species. What happens to those of us who never get there? The fish who never learned to become amphibians: they just beach themselves and slowly dry up in the sharp, brutal air. No getting laid for them, no babies, no legacy, not even a moment’s peace for trying.

Failure is its own punishment. No one is going to scoop you up, pat you on the butt and say “what matters is how you played the game!” because the Universe doesn’t hand out consolation prizes. 10 billion years of living creatures know this. Only humans are so cowardly that they must invent things like pride & righteousness to convince themselves that their failures are wins.

So, my beached whale friends, what are you going to do? You can lie here slowly rotting away for the next 40-50 years, patting yourself on the butt for playing the game. Or you could swim back into the ocean (but won’t you eventually end up right back here again?). Or you could just die.