What the hell is water?

“The fact that millions of people share the same vices does not make these vices virtues, the fact that they share so many errors does not make the errors to be truths, and the fact that millions of people share the same forms of mental pathology does not make these people sane. “

—Erich Fromm, The Sane Society

In a fast-moving society where everything is running, sometimes to ‘no’where (instead of ‘now’here)’, by reading “The Myth of Normal” by Gabor Mate, my mind was amazingly triggered by a very short story David Foster Wallace had chosen to open one of his speeches. It perfectly describes our relation to normality nowadays.?

The story concerns two fish crossing aquatic paths with an elder of their species, who greets them jovially: “‘Morning, boys. How’s the water?’?

And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, ‘What the hell is water?’”?

Well, let’s stop here.?

What Wallace was trying to make his audience think about with this question, is that “the most obvious, ubiquitous, important realities are often the ones hardest to see and talk about.” It might sound banal, simple but “in the day-to-day trenches of adult existence, banal platitudes can have a life-or-death importance.”?

And for my audience, I have a question: “What the hell is your water about?”

It could be something of a survival importance, but you take it for granted.?

When we keep repeating tasks, the brain has a fascinating way of automation. It, instinctively, prioritizes conserving energy that way. In order to optimize and increase efficiency our brain passes certain behavioral models to the so-called “autopilot”.? You'll be on autopilot for most of your life, which opens up all sorts of implications. Maybe you have heard about this hypothesis if you’ve read “Fast and Slow Thinking” (my next article will be about that).?

Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman’s mental model of Fast and Slow Thinking reinforces behavioral economics by explaining how you live most of your life on automatic pilot, and how most of your decisions are essentially irrational and prone to cognitive biases.

Kahneman’s findings describe two distinct thinking systems:?

Fast thinking (system 1): this is automatic, intuitive, error-prone, and used for most common decisions. This is our everyday way of thinking at a majority level.?

Slow thinking (system 2): this is effortful, reasoned, more reliable, and used for complex decisions.?

Fast thinking is excessively connected with our primal survival mechanism (using cognitive shortcuts to quickly respond to threats). We move faster that way but the shortcuts are not reliable. On the other hand, slow thinking needs attention, and more time but ends up in a deeper level of understanding.?

With all these in mind, I want to get back to “Thy Myth of Normal” where the author, Mate, brings to attention the fact that most of the things considered normal in our society are neither healthy nor natural. In contrast, trying to meet modern criteria for normality we become conformists. The requirements for that are essentially abnormal in regard to our nature-given needs (unhealthy and harmful on the physiological, mental, and even spiritual levels).??

If you are an entrepreneur, it might sound strange, but if you question yourself about “What the hell is water” in your case, using your slow-thinking brain, most probably come up understanding that YOU are the water. Running toward goals, having all the burden of improving all the time, trying to grow, and bearing all the pressure, you forget the key. You forget about your physical, mental & and spiritual state, while you are the main asset of the idea you are working on to bring to life.?

To conclude, I want to leave you with that:?

“Be the old fish who knows the importance of the water before it goes missing!”.?

Touché!