fishing is a near-perfect metaphor for modern human life. most people live life chasing goals with a certain expected value that is almost always inflated. we expect to gain more wealth, fame, and/or some worldly desire, yet we almost always fall short. fishing is the exact same; you go expecting to catch a monstrous bass, but nothing even bites your hook.
how should we change our expected value? instead of expecting to catch a fish or land some prestigious job, we should value the process itself. the sitting around, chatting with friends, listening to music while waiting for the bobber to move; the interview preparation, the meaningful conversations, the failures in hopes of a lucrative career. a life built only around catching becomes enslaved to outcomes we cannot control.
this is generally how i approach life. revenue, medals, titles, etc. matter only when they point toward something larger. they are signals and not the purpose. i am less interested in creating or contributing toward something whose sole purpose is revenue than in building things with consequences that leave the world more capable than i found it.
in this new and evolving ai era, humans are consuming more information and media than ever before. i strongly believe that information absorption and creativity are inversely related. the more we consume, the more our thoughts risk becoming inherited rather than discovered. this can be observed in a timeline of consequential discoveries in mathematics.
in earlier eras, people were more limited in what they could absorb, so they were forced to spend more time in curiosity, silence, and original thought. this led to more fascinating discoveries that were further from the norm at that time. people had different obsessions, strange questions, and the courage to sit with uncertainty before arriving at a conclusion. the frontier of technology will not be shaped by those who consume the most. it will be shaped by those who protect their attention, think originally, and pursue what they believe is worth fishing for.