I'll have the fish, please.

     If I were a fish, I’d like to be a marlin. They always seem to have it figured it out, as if their snout pointed them to the next goal, the next step to take or the next mistake to make. I’ve never liked fish until I read The Old Man and the Sea. Its title was crafted symmetrically, displaying a balance one rarely finds in life. Six three letter words that please my unrelenting appetite for serenity. The fish, as it had to be, dies in the narrative, but I’d still risk it to be able to know where I was heading and most of my generation would do the same, given the chance. This is the point we are at, really. What to do other than wait for the next big technological breakthrough that will consume us, consumers and make our trip here turn translucent? – forget transparent, I do not ask for more than I can chew. It is as if our whole raison d'être is to get rid of a kind of fog that makes us drive reluctantly, obliging us to ponder if we got out on the wrong exit or if the road had been full of holes to begin with and we just didn’t notice.

     On the back of my head, though, there is this slight spark making me believe that humanity prevails above all else and the prophets of today will be laughed at in fifty years time – as are those who predicted that watching too much television would cause kids to go blind. But then, aren’t the prophets of our time more informed than those of yesterday? Aren’t we statistically and objectively smarter? Doesn’t the fact that we carry a great percentage of the worlds knowledge in our pockets, limited only by our desire (or lack thereof) to learn more, give us an edge over our grandfathers? Maybe. But then again, a marlin knows where it is headed and it does not connect to the local WiFi. It simply exists among so many others and swims onward, to where it should, to where it must. Sure from time to time a fisherman will come around equipped with his rod, high hopes and a bucket of bait with the sole intent of disturbing its peace and remove its bowls; however, with luck – the same luck we should long for – it’ll grow to own the sea instead; or at the very least, a piece of it.

       I’d like to earn a piece of the planet someday, not by buying it, but by earning it well and honorably as a marlin would. Santiago lost, in the end. He got the fish but never did the fish leave the sea – those waters had been earned bravely by a single marlin that kept on swimming.

- What is it gonna be today?

- I’ll have the fish, please. The meat looks far too tender.

Blue Marlin, Oil Painting. Vladimir Lutsevich
Currently up for sale here