THE VIOLET SEA SNAIL PARADIGM
I am going to tell you a brief story till I have your attention on the bigger picture.
I woke up early on a Sunday morning, incidentally to catch up on the assignments that were due on Monday. I may have procrastinated more than necessary and thus the avalanche is here to haunt on a day that should have been my “4th Of July”. That’s it. This is my tragic story. The epilogue however spans more volumes than the story.
I sat thinking about my ordeal for long enough. A lot of us (almost all of us) spend Sunday mentally preparing for Monday. It is funny how the only day that should have been spent on leisure, is indeed spent grousing about how difficult the week is going to be. Infact, there is an article that says, almost 80% of us experience elevated anxiety in the anticipation of Monday. If you think I am just being too morose , take a look at this study on how Sleepy Judge Talks About Sunday Scaries.
The Mondays are endless. You may plan to improve your life, Next Year, Next Month, Next week ,Tomorrow. Or may be at 12pm sharp, today. But The caveats (or the Mondays) are way too copious to facilitate the free flow of plans. You might plan to start Zumba from Monday but in reality you might have to pull an hour extra for the month end sales report. Your friend invites you for a drink. But your happy nod is interrupted by the notification on your phone. Your Weekly Planner does not approve of you going astray like this. How Dare you?
It is thus safe to say that we are not sailing through life. We are merely floating. Floating in a vast ocean, at the mercy of externalities akin to the Westerlies, Tradewinds or the Ocean Gyres. We seek to get to the shore but the ocean really doesn’t care. That being said, What is a Violet Sea Snail Paradigm and why is it so relevant to our life?Well I was reading this Pulitzer Winning Novel called “All the Light We Cannot See” and came across this short fable on a Violet sea snail. A Violet Sea Snail unlike other snails hardly spends its life on land. It spends its whole life drifting on the ocean surface in warm seas at the mercy of the winds. It is blind and has a paper-thin shell.
Whats most tragic and interesting is The tiny purple snails build their own rafts. They use their foot to agitate the water, creating bubbles, which they bind together with mucus. If the bubble raft ever breaks apart, the snail will sink into the ocean and die. It aspires to the safe but it can’t choose to be. Aren’t we all Violet Sea Snails then?! . We are busy building our own fragile raft .We are also wary of the currents that is bound to break it apart.
John Doe built a small raft by choosing to pursue a career in Filmmaking. He diligently read and consumed all the content and educated himself and built the passion Day by day. But one day he was forced to think he needs a plan B as a cushion to fall back on. The turn of events led him to take up a job that he started to detest daily. A Sunday thus could never be the respite it was supposed to be. The raft was broken eventually by the strong force of parental expectations and the pressure to have a “safe career” for retirement.
Richard Roe fell in love and what seemed like the timeless love affair of his life ,was indeed a solid raft (or so he thought) to sail through with happiness and togetherness. But With time he could hardly be himself, his partner couldn’t stop snooping and he was always led to believe he never made efforts. The gaslighting was immense but he still held on. How could he let go of the Raft. What If he is just on the surface above Mariana Trench?! We don’t know what happened eventually but we can admit how fragile the raft is. Richard Roe is now the Snail !
Manny Zoe was a stellar student in college . Her professors were convinced she was going to be the star alum and they will someday brag about knowing her. Their expectations and limelight had built a raft of fame for her. She began to believe that she was destined for greatness. There was no grey area and she had no plans to “settle down”. Eventually when she stepped out of college, competition was fierce. She couldn’t live in the bubble (or on the raft) that she was the best. Being no 2 was not acceptable and thus she started to spiral into an abyss of self loathing and a low self confidence that was hard to build. She should have dealt with it but her own arrogance and the immense ego had made cracks in her raft.
It could be something as big as your career aspiration or something as trivial as choosing to read a book. We are never sure whether we will get through with it, without being disoriented by factors not controlled by us. We don’t know whether we can make it to the shore without being budged by the El Ninos. We are conditioned to design rafts to stay afloat in the ocean of social afflictions. We can’t leave the ocean just like the Snail can’t, for it feeds us emotionally. Sometimes when there is no pressure in our oceans, we create one, in the garb of “being productive” and give Competition to Tom Coe who just started an online course on Data Science.
Tomorrow when you make a timetable, pause to think whether the 1pm break is designed by your will or merely because 1pm has conditioned you into taking a break?
