Schooled by a School of Fish

This past weekend, I was in Cape May, New Jersey for the first time.  What a beautiful, wonderful place pulsating with history.  A little known fact about Cape May is it is the only ‘entire’ town to be declared a historic landmark in all of the USA.

Cape May is also a beautiful beach town and America’s first summer getaway.  Perfectly located where the Delaware Bay feeds into the Atlantic Ocean, it is a town that benefits tremendously from its thriving sea ports. It was at one of these where my wife and I purchased tickets to take a boat out to see dolphins and other animal life.  The tour took us out of the cape and through the nutrient rich waters off the southern tip of NJ, until we finally found a group of dolphins.

These handful of dolphins happened to be hunting.  We could tell this by the way they were swimming.  They would team up to swim circles around a school of fish causing panic among them.  Then, the dolphins would each take turns swooping in for the catch.  We, of course, only saw them when they surfaced, but the tour guide painted the picture down below for us.

In case you do not know, dolphins are extremely intelligent creatures.  They are mammals in an ocean filled with fish and use their resourcefulness to survive.  We could learn a thing or two from these dolphins.  We could learn even more from the school of fish though.

A school of fish are all individually equal, but incredibly on their own.

Even though they swim with one another in the same direction, the minute there is danger lurking, they all scatter in fear.  This panic, caused by a moment in which they are forced to act individually, leaves them in their most vulnerable state, and ripe for the picking of a hungry predator such as the dolphin.

Life is very similar to me.  Staying with the pack gives you the illusion of confidence.  You feel the safety in numbers, much like the school of fish.  This many fish can’t be wrong, can they?

Of course they can, and truthfully, they usually are.  Staying with the pack gives you the illusion of confidence because you are following a path someone else has set.  The majority have decided to follow as well which is why it feels like the right thing to do.  However, history has shown that staying with the pack is the least safest place to be.

Life is going to throw every one of us giant curve balls, some more than others. It is during these moments that we are defined as individuals.

However, if you have followed someone else’s decision making for the majority of your life, then you will not be prepared when it comes time to make your own crucial decision. Many of us follow the majority because we fear being wrong.  Our education system has taught us that we should not make mistakes.  We should all strive to be perfect.  This is the same education system that claims no one is perfect.  Basically, they are teaching us to strive for the impossible.  When we don’t reach that plateau, we feel like a loser.

However, those of us that look past the judgments, and continue making decisions for ourselves even after we fail, are the ones who will be prepared, and ultimately, successful.  We are the dolphins who will swim circles around the rest of the pack if and when it is necessary. We are the ones using our brains, like mammals were intended to do.

Sometimes the pack heads in the right direction and sometimes they don’t.  Only by thinking like an individual are you able to tell which direction is best for you.

It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power.  Alan Cohen