I'm about to tell you the most profound thing you've heard all day.

So astounding, I've hesitated and even telling you.

But you must be told, are you ready?

You are not a fish.

That was a lot to drop in your lap, so I'll give you a moment, but you're not a fish.

I hope this comes as no surprise, but stick with me. I'm going somewhere with this.

Everybody is a genius, but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life, believing that it is stupid. There is much debate surrounding this quote as to whether

or not Einstein, in fact, said it. In further reading of its history, the idea about schools

for animals has been around for over 100 years, reaching back

to a post in a Journal of Education in 1898. The essay was written under the pen name Aesop Jr.,

who was later identified as Amos Dober of Tufts, a prominent physicist and inventor.

In short, the essay pointed out how absurd it is to use a single standard to assess how bright

or of value a student was.

His essay, and I'm paraphrasing here, went on to say how each animal should be able to do

one thing as well as the others. If an animal such as an eagle had great wings, but short legs,

the focus was teaching the bird to use its legs more and to fly only for recreation, for fun. Of course, this is all fictitious,

but the animals in this school that would not submit to the training but continued to use their

natural talents as they had been given were dishonored, called narrow-minded, and were mocked. No one was allowed to graduate from that school

unless he or she could climb, swim, run, and fly at a level set forth by the school.

The time it took the duck to learn how to run, hindered into his swimming time for the test and was

thereby yelled at and punished so embarrassly so that he left completely humiliated.

A fish cannot run on land as much as a rabbit cannot do the backstroke. So how is it you and I individually

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