David Hutto

It isn’t as if one person is a fish out of water and another swims free.

The question is how far out of the water you are. The implication of the “fish out of water” metaphor is that many people, fishly speaking, are in the water, completely at home and in their element, while some are out of water and unhappy.

Short of taking their testimony, let’s assume that for fish, being in the water means full contentment. Nothing is missing but the bad parts. Do you float tranquilly along yourself, waiting for snacks to pass by? Have you known many people who do? Maybe fish are content because they don’t give it much thought. Or maybe it’s really a good life being a fish.

As to humans, we are all out of the water. The best we can hope for—metaphorically speaking— is to be near the water and perhaps get in it once in a while. Some people do splash happily about on a regular basis, but even they must get out of the water and go to the dentist now and then.

Unless you are unusually lucky, or unlucky, you probably can see the water, but only occasionally are you able to wash your cares away in your mother element. Maybe on weekends you get some time for what makes life worth living.

The hardest case is people who lie parched and forlorn like fish in the desert. They know that water exists. But they themselves became lawyers instead of anthropologists, they manage department stores instead of working on the land, they live with people who think their dreams are signs of mental weakness.

For the parched and forlorn, we will wish them to discover an unexpected stream. But nobody gets back in the water to stay.