An Existential Fish and The Meaning of This

This.

This cannot be all there is for me.

This finite space.

This space that holds me.

This space where I rise and fall and glide and swirl... and swirl and glide and fall and rise.

Until I can't.

Because it ends.

Abruptly.

Effectively.

Sealing the Beyond away from This.

Away from me.

This space in which I swirl and glide and rise and fall cannot transcend past its end, and I cannot transcend past This.

This cannot be all there is for me.

I see the dark and linear tunnel of Beyond with its one-dimensional horizontal flow taking beings and moving them into the light at the end.

I want to go toward the light.

I watch as it blinks. On and off. On and off. Swallowing the beings in the Beyond. Never to return. Leaving me here, alone, in This.

Why can't I go with them?

Why am I in This and not Beyond?

Is it that This wants me, or is it that Beyond does not?

Is there something about me?

Who am I to This? What am I not to the Beyond?

I grow dizzy, searching for the answers. Round and round I go, inspecting every last speck of This. The green waving weeds are mute, the bright red coral is ignorant, and the ruins of the ship-wrecked boat hold no secrets to share. Even inside the ever-bobbing treasure chest, there is nothing.

Nothing.

All clueless.

Unquestioning of This.

The only scent of a clue lies at the edge. At the threshold between This and Beyond. There is a magic here that tastes of possibility. It tantalises me. I rush at the edge, again and again, and again. I try to imbibe it. I may be a fool, but I am a fool who feels, and I feel the answers are here. So near.

It hurts.

Sometimes the magic at the edge shows me myself. When the light at the end of Beyond shines just so, I catch myself, in glances, looking back at This. At me.

I stare right at myself, into myself, through myself.

It is all I know of what I am.

I spend a lot of time staring into the Beyond, hoping to catch glimpses of myself looking back.

To understand.

There has to be more for me than This.

I know I am grey and small, with silvery spots, a fin at one end, and googly eyes at the other.

That is what I see.

Is that all I am?

I sense the answer to that question is the key to This.

It is such a ridiculous question!

Who am I?

The answer should be simple.

I am me.

But it is not.

It cannot be.

I am more, so much more, than what I see. I am fast. I am nimble. I swish, I swirl, I rise, I fall, I twirl.

I am more than what I see.

That hollow me is not who I am.

I am more than my grey scales, more than my large eyes, more than the speed or way I move.

These are elements of me, but they are not who I am.

I am more than that hollow me.

There is much more within me.

There has to be.

The beings that pass through the Beyond...

They are like me

Some are grey like me, small like me, spotty like me. Many have googly eyes, which they bring up against the edge of This.

Just like me!

I think they, too, search for who they are in This.

Perhaps they smell the magic at the edge.

We are similar, these beings and me.

Only they can enter This, whereas I cannot enter Beyond.

Why?

Perhaps there are answers not in what we share but in our differences.

Perhaps that is what makes me who I am.

Difference.

My fins, and my lack of sticks to move on, are these the defining differences that prevent me from transcending This and reaching Beyond?

Yes!

Of course.

How silly of me.

It is not that which unites us that divides us. It is what divides us that does that.

I should try to be less different.

Less me.

Yes!

I will cut off my fin!

Be gone, my fin.

I will become more like them.

There has to be more than This!