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Not Going With The Flow


A few days ago, I read the quote, "Only dead fish go with the flow."

My whole life, I tried to go against the flow. As a born rebel, I never learned to go with the flow, and I always tried to get things done my way (at least I tried and failed sometimes and succeeded many times). More or less, I was satisfied with how things were going (a sound-minded person doesn't need more than that). Then, things happened, and you fell into the trap of society, thinking you need to change some things in your life to make it work. You start believing one side of the story as reality; you try to go with the flow, and you stop fighting as hard as you used to. You become so resilient that your instinct to fight back dies, and all you get is a metaphorical dead fish and the flow of society's opinion. Resilience against this simply doesn't work; it's not an option. It's a sissy move just to maintain the status quo (my failed experiment).

What you really need is to become anti-fragile, a term coined by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Fragile things break under stress; they cannot sustain the volatile conditions of the world. So, the opposite of fragile wouldn't be things that simply don't break but rather things that, when put under pressure, get stronger. Anti-fragile things thrive on redundancy and chaos; optimization is not their primary goal. They are unlike fragile things which are optimized for better performance in specific conditions and perish when such conditions change. For example, a minimalist with fewer possessions might perish in a disaster, whereas a survivalist who has stocked up on many things he might never need will not only survive but thrive in such a scenario.

After a long time, this one is for not being the dead fish and with the spirit of going against the flow.

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