Some of us just need a larger pond, I guess

In our back garden there sits a serene little fishpond, surrounded by plants and shrubs and looking invitingly serene. Within that pond are four fish – 3 goldfish and one koi.

They’ve inhabited their little domain for a number of years now. They’re no fuss or muss. In the warmer months I feed them each morning, and I run the filter and the water sometimes gets algae-ridden, but I try to keep it moderately clean.

I’m fond of my fish. They’re very quiet and they put no demands on me provided I minister to their fundamental needs. I always do.

And I think of those four fish – they’re actually getting moderately large –- and think how that back garden pond is their entire universe. It’s all that they know and, as far as understand, it’s all they want. They don’t long for a vast lake or even a larger pond, for they have no experience to tell them what that would be like.

Indeed, in their confinement, they know nothing about the larger domestic universe that surrounds them. They have no appreciation of the lawns, or the gardens, or the house that looms behind them. They do know me because I’m the person who brings them food. They like that. They anticipate my arrival each morning and rise to the surface in expectations. Very small expectations. They’re not frustrated. They ask for nothing more. Even ‘better’ food isn’t on their agenda.

“No, just that same old flaked shit, boss. Works for us. Don’t be going fancy on us and getting upscale fish food.”

This is their world. They were tiny tad fishes when they came and they seem to be happy and content in their known universe. In that I kind of admire them. They know nothing of environmental concerns, fear of a global recession, the price of gasoline and the apparent gouging by big petro thugs grieves them not at all. As long as the food keeps coming, and the water doesn’t dry up or become impure or de-oxygenated they have no worries. Even if threats of environmental havoc are out there, they cannot abstract that fear anymore than they can have nightmares about raids by raccoons or herons. Such tragedies can befall them, but the fish don’t know it.

Human beings, however, do not have the limitations of fish. We all live in a larger pond. A pond that for many of us, especially the traveled, can be extensive. I hold to the belief that the more traveled we are, the broader and more tolerant we are about life on all sides of our pond. We come to realize that despite nonsense and biases over race and creed and language all those ‘issues’, our fellow fish have more similarities than differences.

And this brings me to thoughts about a guy that never is entirely away from my cognizance. I think about him once or twice a week. Sometimes I think I ought to do something about him. Probably it’s none of my business – but maybe it is.

That guy is my youngest brother. Born nearly a decade after I was, I confess I don’t understand him at all. Furthermore, the powers in his life – namely his wife – want to make sure that I gain no greater understanding of him. She seems to control his destiny, wants, and needs. Kind of creepy that.

Quick profile of my bro: Brother lives in a very limited pond. Intelligent, good looking (I assume, though I haven’t seen him in nearly 15-years), he does ‘nothing.’ He has a university degree, but has literally never worked at anything resembling a job or, to my knowledge, any sort of creative endeavor like painting or writing.

He ahs never done anything, nor has he ever been anywhere. He has never been on an airplane and, since he was a child, vacationing with parents, he has never been out of the country. He spends his days and nights in the house he shares with a wife who has always paid the bills and ‘kept’ him. She brooks no interference. My ex, showering compassion and concern for her brother-in-law, dared to suggested to his wife that her BOL needed some intensive psychiatric help. Wife went ballistic and didn’t speak to my ex again for a long time.

Anyway, I have tried to get in touch with him many times over the years, and have spoken with him on the phone and he’s always quite friendly, even chatty. But, if I suggest dropping by, there is usually an excuse. That’s OK. I can live with it in the sense it’s his choice.

But, I cannot help but go to his fish pond and wonder why he wants it to be so confined, so limited. How does the tedium not kill him? I know he doesn’t seek solace through drink or drugs, so what gives him incentive to get up on the morning? What motivates his wife to see him living a completely bovine existence? I mean, she got up and went out to work every morning, so what gives?

Oh, I could offer all sorts of psychoanalytical reasons, but that would be presumptuous in a way. And, I suppose, by human nature I tend to put myself and my restless soul in his position and wonder how he has kept from killing himself. But, that’s me, not him.

All I know is that I have chosen to explore a larger pond in life; and it hasn’t always been easy, but at least there has been some element of adventure therein. Torpor doesn’t work for me. I don’t know if it does for him, either, but since he, like my fish, has never known any broader horizons, maybe it does. Maybe I’m wrong.