{"id":3230,"date":"2026-06-05T19:42:44","date_gmt":"2026-06-05T16:42:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/soaringwords.org\/?p=3230"},"modified":"2026-06-05T19:42:55","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T16:42:55","slug":"what-i-learned-from-a-school-of-fish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/soaringwords.org\/what-i-learned-from-a-school-of-fish\/","title":{"rendered":"What I Learned from a School of Fish"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I can&#8217;t help myself.<\/p>\n<p>Every twenty minutes, I pop out of my beach chair and meander into the ocean whenever my glasses fog up from the humidity or whenever I simply get too hot. I toss aside my straw hat and replace it with the baby blue baseball cap that I always wear in the water.<\/p>\n<p>Surrounded by a vast sky and a turquoise expanse of ocean, I say a silent prayer:<\/p>\n<p><em>&#8220;Give me a sign&#8230;&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Then I splash into the sea.<\/p>\n<p>Suddenly, I notice hundreds of iridescent, impossibly small fish darting through the seafoam current amid a slight dusting of undulating brown seaweed on the ocean floor.<\/p>\n<p>I pause to take it all in.<\/p>\n<p>For quite some time, I stand quietly as the waves gently ebb and flow around me. Each fish is no longer than a couple of inches. They swim in perfect synchrony.<\/p>\n<p>I am literally surrounded.<\/p>\n<p>I watch in silence.<\/p>\n<p>Normally, the aerial show above my head is the main event. Each day, my attention is captivated by graceful seagulls and migrating birds flying in formation across the sky.<\/p>\n<p>The highlight is always the pelicans.<\/p>\n<p>I delight in watching them repeatedly dive-bomb into the ocean, hurling themselves headfirst into the water in pursuit of the catch of the day.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-3232\" src=\"http:\/\/soaringwords.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/pelican_smaller.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"331\" height=\"265\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The school of fish, however, was a quieter delight\u2014easy to overlook if one wasn&#8217;t paying close attention.<\/p>\n<p>The fish were nowhere near as dramatic as the soaring birds, yet they were equally wondrous to behold.<\/p>\n<p>As I walked back to shore and settled into my beach chair, I reflected on the power of both large and small things to transform us when we take the time to notice them.<\/p>\n<p>I kept thinking about those tiny fish moving together beneath the surface.<\/p>\n<p>They reminded me that life&#8217;s most meaningful lessons are not always found in grand gestures or dramatic displays. Sometimes they arrive quietly, hidden in plain sight, waiting patiently for us to notice.<\/p>\n<p>The soaring pelicans and migrating birds will always capture my attention, but that day it was a humble school of fish that offered the greater gift:<\/p>\n<p>A reminder to slow down.<\/p>\n<p>To look closely.<\/p>\n<p>To remain open to wonder.<\/p>\n<p>And to appreciate both the extraordinary and the ordinary moments of life.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m sending you strength and love.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Soaringwords is the power to heal.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I can&#8217;t help myself. Every twenty minutes, I pop out of my beach chair and meander into the ocean whenever my glasses fog up from the humidity or whenever I simply get too hot. I toss aside my straw hat and replace it with the baby blue baseball cap that I always wear in the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3231,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mind-body"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/soaringwords.org\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/soaringwords.org\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/soaringwords.org\/api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soaringwords.org\/api\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soaringwords.org\/api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3230"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/soaringwords.org\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3230\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3233,"href":"https:\/\/soaringwords.org\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3230\/revisions\/3233"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soaringwords.org\/api\/wp\/v2\/media\/3231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/soaringwords.org\/api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soaringwords.org\/api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soaringwords.org\/api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}