For a fish, water is so obvious, so ever-present, that it doesn’t even know it exists.
It can’t notice it, because it has never known any other environment.
A thought came to me that, in a metaphorical sense, we’re very much the same.
We live immersed in our thoughts, beliefs, assumptions, rules, associations, judgments, and mental models.
They’re so natural to us that we stop noticing them.
We don’t see that thoughts are just thoughts.
They have no real power unless we give them power by directing our attention toward them and believing them.
We take them literally as if they were real and objectively verifiable.
Many of them are like old friends.
They return every day, sometimes for years.
The more time we spend with them, the more real they seem.
They shape our decisions, actions, and experiences. They evoke real emotions and have real consequences.
And yet: thoughts are just thoughts.
We don’t have to believe them.
We don’t have to take them seriously.
What does a fish see when it looks up?
It sees the place where water meets air: the boundary between two worlds.
It’s similar for us when we begin to notice that a thought is just a thought.
When we see that a thought has appeared but we don’t have to follow it.
When we find a bit of distance between what happens and the meaning we give it.
When we realize that we are not our thoughts or feelings. We simply have them.
That’s our “window into another world.”