Teaching a fish how to ride a bicycle

Einstein famously said, "..... if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid".

So how do you know you are a fish? And what if your deepest desire, as a fish, is to climb a tree? Or ride a motorcycle, because riding motorcycles would be really cool.

Sometimes we don't know we are fish until we have jumped out of our pond and are desperately gasping for air. If we are lucky enough to survive that leap and make it back to the environs we were made for, what do we do then? Accept our fishiness and enjoy a good swim? Or do we invent, create, and strive against our limitations, knowing full well that we may not survive?

* Ten years after writing this, I feel like some revision is in order. This quote from Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor’s  helped bring clarity to the ambitious fish in me, “...you cannot value dreams according to the odds of their coming true. The real value is in stirring within us the will to aspire.”