The Fisherman and The Businessman
It’s the end of the year, and for most people, a time of reflection. A season to evaluate, reassess, measure ourselves against last year’s ambitions, and consider our next ones. It felt timely to share this popular Brazilian short story (translated into English) I discovered via the author Paulo Coelho.
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There was once a businessman who was sitting by the beach in a small Brazilian village.
As he sat, he saw a Brazilian fisherman rowing a small boat towards the shore having caught quite few big fish.
The businessman was impressed and asked the fisherman, “How long does it take you to catch so many fish?”
The fisherman replied, “Oh, just a short while.”
“Then why don’t you stay longer at sea and catch even more?” The businessman was astonished.
“This is enough to feed my whole family,” the fisherman said.
The businessman then asked, “So, what do you do for the rest of the day?”
The fisherman replied, “Well, I usually wake up early in the morning, go out to sea and catch a few fish, then go back and play with my kids. In the afternoon, I take a nap with my wife, and when evening comes, I join my buddies in the village for a drink — we play guitar, sing and dance throughout the night.”
The businessman offered a suggestion to the fisherman.
“I am a PhD in business management. I could help you to become a more successful person. From now on, you should spend more time at sea and try to catch as many fish as possible. When you have saved enough money, you could buy a bigger boat and catch even more fish. Soon you will be able to afford to buy more boats, set up your own company, your own production plant for canned food and distribution network. By then, you will have moved out of this village and to Sao Paulo, where you can set up HQ to manage your other branches.”
The fisherman continues, “And after that?”
The businessman laughs heartily, “After that, you can live like a king in your own house, and when the time is right, you can go public and float your shares in the Stock Exchange, and you will be rich.”
The fisherman asks, “And after that?”
The businessman says, “After that, you can finally retire, you can move to a house by the fishing village, wake up early in the morning, catch a few fish, then return home to play with kids, have a nice afternoon nap with your wife, and when evening comes, you can join your buddies for a drink, play the guitar, sing and dance throughout the night!”
The fisherman was puzzled, “Isn’t that what I am doing now?”
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We all have the fisherman and the businessman within us. It’s the great duality of the human experience. We live (or at least attempt to live) with a gratitude for what we have, alongside an ambition to grow, produce, serve more people, make more money, and ultimately shape our world into what we know it can be.
But which character is in the driver's seat? And where are we heading?
One of the best things about my life is that I get to work with the prolific and wise Ed Batista as my coach. We regularly discuss the balancing of (or at times tension between) gratitude and ambition. He reminds me that not only do levels of gratitude and ambition move up and down, but they also move left and right towards different things.
And this had me reflecting on a few key questions:
What happens when you take an unusual level of ambition and point it towards building a loving home and happy family?
Or what if you took the comfort, appreciation, and gratitude you feel in your home and brought that to your work? Could you be perfectly happy and appreciative of the role you’re in?
I’m also wondering how the pandemic will affect our gratitudes and ambitions heading into next year:
Will we realize just how wonderful dinner with the family has been each night and pull back on the late nights at the office? Or will we crave the distraction-free late nights getting lost in our work?
When they come back, will we savor quiet commutes more than we did before? Or will we fall back into dreaded feelings of similar routines?
Will we be eager to travel to meet with customers/partners? Or will we be more concerned with the risks of travel and skeptical of the in-person benefits?
Will we come out of this with pent up energy ready to pour ourselves into our work in 2021? Or have we realized new and fulfilling hobbies that will fill up the hours gained from more flexible/remote work?
The answers will be different for each of us and our gratitude and ambitions will certainly be changed —up, down, left, and right.
Mainly, I wanted to wish you a reflective season with the time and space to ponder what’s most important to you. I hope you get time to think, to walk, and to question. I hope you’re able to land on a set of deliberate and focused desires which you can pursue in the new year. I wish you harmony of ambition and gratitude, prosperity and health -- more big fish, and more drinks in the village with friends.
Tyler