“I heard this story about a fish, he swims up to an older fish and says:
“I’m trying to find this thing they call the ocean.”
“The ocean?” the older fish says, “that’s what you’re in right now.”
“This”, says the young fish, “this is water. What I want is the ocean!”

“Soul” from Pixar Movie

This is something that I come back to over and over again.

We are all in this thing together. This thing called life. One big ocean.

If you were to juxtapose the metaphor of water vs ocean, it would be so perfect. Two people can have the exact same diagnosis and have two entirely different take on life. One may consider it a warning shot and live their lives so passionately and intentionally and another person just gives up and sinks into doom and gloom laced with never ending depression.

My new year’s episode for my podcast is the story of a 70 year old surgeon. He gets diagnosed with stage IV pancreatic cancer. He lives 6 more years. In that time, he reconnects with his childhood friend and marries her. He gets reacquainted with his adult son whom he never got to know before, for the very first time. He meets his two grandkids. He lives his life with purpose and passion.

I cannot wait for you to hear his story told by his loving daughter in law. The person who suggested him to sign up for a new trial.

She said he “lived” more in those 6 years knowing he was dying, than if he thought he was going to live for many more years. He realized his life was right there and then.

It’s the same ocean. There is no ‘there’. It’s right here, right now.

On occasion, I have been sharing some of my clients’ struggles with you in this space. It is to make a point or to drive a lesson home that we all bleed the same way.

There is such similarity in the stories and people’s actual struggles, that I get random messages and texts from friends and acquaintances (ironically, not actual clients) asking me if I was writing about them.

They hear their stories in my writings, because we are all having similar struggles.

It may seem complex to us as we are going through it. It feels unbearable and we feel like we are the only one going through this one experience. We are the only one stuck in the water. We cannot wait to get to the ocean where everyone else is living.

A better situation. A better there.

There are good days and bad days. No doubt about it. But what you have going on for you is this very moment. This is your life. You could imagine it to be better: Out there in the ocean.

But it is already exactly as it should be. You are already in the ocean.

Sometimes you need to remove yourself from your situation to see that in fact you are exactly where you need to be. If you could make this moment feel as if it is as it should be, your experience changes.

It is not to say life is not hard. It is. Our hearts will break. We will lose our jobs. We will lose our loved ones. We will lose our sense of existence and purpose when we lose a loved one.

But in the middle of that, in the middle of the pandemic, you can still turn your attention to your breath. Right now. For what it’s worth. You are here. Reading these words.

Is right this moment so unbearable?

How much of the suffering we experience is optional? How much of it is imaginary?

Can you take a minute and really realize that the ocean is not out there?

It is right “here”.

Sending so much love and Aloha.