Perhaps today, in the time that I have been born, and the fortunate first world I’ve been born into, it is all too easy to stunt my own growth, to have life pass by without so much as a thought, reflection, or to even experience true happiness.

What is true happiness?

Studies are really onto something when they say relationships are the key - they are absolutely timeless, and perhaps one of the greatest sources of growth, joy, and fulfilment, as they have been for our species for millennia.

Yet, my relationship with myself has been both my greatest supporter and my worst enemy.

Promises that I’ve made to myself - of how I would love myself by taking care and spending time and effort on the health, habits, and goals that are so important to me - have only been broken time and time again by an unreliable Fish, flopping around with the current.

For is it so horrifying, having so many other Fish swept up in the current alongside me?

Like in the great Oceans of our world, who are we to fight our destinies of swimming endlessly, aimlessly, chasing physical comforts and codes like food, sex, and reproduction?

Who are we to question the laws that say we must exploit and eat the smaller Fish, for we are in turn the smaller Fish for larger Fish, who are themselves beings whose lives start, drag, and end in unknowing service of monster Fish living lives we’ll never see, yet often imagine in envy?

Those monster Fish are not Dragons. They’ve mutated from all the plastic, pride, and blood they’ve consumed, breathed, and orgied in.

I would like to know. I have suspicions and thoughts, but I can never be sure. I don’t know if anyone could be sure - were any of the great emperors, philosophers, or leaders right? At least a lot of the smart Fish seem to agree on a few key points.

• Dragons are Fish who have defeated the impossible current beating down on them every day - to have swam all the way up the waterfall, over the Fish-turned-crabs who try to pull them back down, and continued to rise above the land where monster Fish live the rest of their lives to engorge.

• Dragons are Fish who have grown the strength not to just push themselves and their selfishly-loved ones on arbitrary paths through the great Ocean, but are now able to see and influence the current from the sky, guiding entire schools to generally good and positive directions.

• Dragons are Fish who are actually able to constantly see their reflection, being above the water’s surface. More importantly, they are able to be proud and happy with what they see, as a product of the gradual and effortful transformation they experienced leaping up the waterfall.

Find your waterfall. Start swimming, and catch your reflection between each leap. Rise to the top so that you may return as a Dragon to help all those that you love, and have your own legend etched forever in the course of our species.

Or, just be a happy Fish.