Goldfish and their Dilemma in Life

Today, I found out a very disturbing fact, that it is indeed true that fish have very short term memory. Kokopops and I went to buy new fish for our tank today, and wanted to find out if the new fish will get along with the old fish.

The fish guy told us this, "you have to ease the fish into the tank, make sure there are places in the tank where the new fish can hide for a little while. Then, after a few hours, the fish forgets, and they won't know that the new fish are new. That's also why you can't keep feeding fish, because they forget they've eaten. So everytime you feed them, they eat and they just keep eating till they explode and die."

Imagine the look on my face.

I can't decide if this is a good thing or a bad thing, particularly since I just started reading "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" in which the concept of no eternal return is discussed. One of the wonders of life is that there is no eternal return. To me, that makes every moment and every day something to live up for, and one can never know if one makes a right decision, because the same moment and circumstance never comes by again for you try out the other alternative.

It is, however, different for a fish. They have a constant reset button, which forceably allows them to try again and again and again. At the same time, they bear no grudges, they remember no errors, they recognize no love, they make no friends. However, each moment is equally valuable as that of ours.

We, human and fish, live for each moment.

The former for no eternal return but memory, the latter for eternal return but no memory.