How much freedom does a goldfish experience in a glass?

Not much, you might think. I mean, look at how limited the glass bowl is, how little room for exploration there is.  

Yet, does the goldfish think the same? To the goldfish who was born into the glass bowl, we might argue that the lack of freedom we perceive from the outside is not experienced in the same way by the goldfish. For the goldfish, this is simply what life is.  

You might think yourself to be totally different from the goldfish in the example, but bear with me, and let’s see how sure you stay of this.  

If you look at what you know about your world, you might argue that the possibilities you have are way grander than what the goldfish has. Yet, given the vast possibilities that exist for a human being, I would argue that your glass bowl is much smaller in comparison to what the glass is to the ocean.  

Human beings are anything but confined in theory, but we are in practice. In our everyday way of operating, we do not question our confinements, our already assumed interpretations of the world, and our behavior in it.  

You walk down the same street, meet the same people, go to the same shops, and buy the same products. You think to yourself that you could do things differently, but for most, it will stay just that—a thought.  

Evolutionarily, this makes sense. If you know where the waterhole is, why would you risk walking around looking for another one, potentially losing important calories needed for survival?  

If you know where to get food, why would you go down a path you're not sure will lead you to it?  

So, you don’t. You continue walking down the same street, meeting the same people, doing the same work, waiting for something to happen that never comes.  

Just as the fish has little awareness of the water it swims in, we, in turn, have little awareness of the "water" we swim in—our survival mechanisms that totally confine what we will do.  

Not for nothing have different traditions made an effort to map these mechanisms (Buddhism, yoga, Christian mysticism, TCM, the Bhagavad Gita, Tao Te Ching, and many more). What has been seen is the following:  

Before there is awareness of something, we do not have a choice about our relationship to it.  

Only when the goldfish realizes its predicament will it even consider its options to leave or transcend it.  

The same goes for your mind.

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There are waters we swim in called:

- Work is stressful  

- Entrepreneurship needs hustle  

- Relationships are hard  

- Better be safe  

- Hard work is what is needed  

- Good people are hard to find  

- Balancing work and family is difficult  

- Money is hard to come by  

- I am never going to be as great as X  

- If someone finds out I am not as good as they think I am...  

- Life is hard  

- Life is scary  

- Dying is bad  

- The world is messed up  

- I am too old  

- I am too young  

And many more.  

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These beliefs, assumptions, and interpretations become the glass bowl of our existence and are usually only challenged by chance or when our current operating system is forced to update due to circumstances.  

For most people, this is the only way they will break out: to be challenged by life, experience a meaningful loss, lose a job, suddenly have something beautiful happen out of the expected, or meet someone who, for some reason, breaks through this wall of thoughts.  

Now, instead of waiting for it and accepting your goldfish glass, you can actually see this as good news.  

It all starts by entertaining the possibility that you actually have a glass in which you live.  

From there, as science and philosophy do, ask yourself: What’s the nature of your glass? What is it made of? What are the limits of my glass? What are the things I can’t see myself doing, and why?  

And like the fish, you have a chance to discover something amazing!  

That the glass does not exist—that it is totally made up by your own mind—and that you have total freedom to make up a new glass or throw it out altogether and learn to swim in the ocean.