Swimming Monkey

For all my life, I wanted to be like others—professional gamers, startup founders, talented musicians, brilliant programmers, and even buff bodybuilders. I was a mediocre human doing mediocre things. When I looked on the screens, there were world-class individuals doing amazing things, and I couldn’t help but compare myself to them. I also tried to become my peers: many of my high school peers were good at basketball, and I tried so hard to become like them. But I couldn’t. I was the kid whom no one wanted on their team, and even when I got picked, no one passed me the ball—instead of being a player, I was running around the court like a useless meatbag.

Somewhere along the way, I realized that I was like a monkey trying to win a swimming race. All the people I compared myself with were amazing at their own thing, and I was deriving my self-worth by how good I was at their thing. That’s crazy! That realization was the genesis of a story I wrote months ago: The Story Of Powie And Coatl, which I still reread once in a while.

June 26, 2021