Ideas are tranquil in the way standing in the middle of a placid river, water up to your waist, in the midst of the dog days of summer is. The water is chilly; the air is sweltering. A fish bumps against your calf, you can choose to let it go by, or snatch it up, to see it for what it is.
Ideas are fish.
They come, they go. They bump into your legs and you choose whether to snatch them up or not, to see just how big they are. Sometimes they’re big, most they’re not. There’s no way to tell just how big from that first bump, no, you have to make the dive for it.
What about the ideas that go bump and just keep going because you let them go? There’s no way to tell just what they could have been--what their potential could have been. You must come to terms with this, to be content with the choice to let the fish go by, to let the idea vanish into the realm of ‘what if.’
My ideas are like fish in a placid river. I choose to let them go by; I choose to snatch them up to see just how big they are. Most of the time they’re small, but sometimes they’re not. It’s that small chance that keeps my eyes glued to the water’s surface, hoping to catch a glimpse before I have to choose.
It doesn’t often work.
It’s hard to gauge the potential of an idea off a bump, or a glimpse, because ideas are what you make out of them. Certainly, some fish are bigger than others. But isn’t it a fact of nature that even a small fish can grow to be the biggest in the pond?
Nurture your idea and it may grow. Make it into your vision of the greatest behemoth lurking under the water’s shimmering surface. The onus is yours to make your fish as big as it can be.
So, you magnificent bastards, next time you’re standing waist deep in a placid river and a fish bumps into your leg, don’t wonder how big the fish is, but how big you can make it. Then snatch it up.
Styles Yugen, signing off.