Seeing life through eyes we’re taught to ignore

When I first looked at this image, it didn’t seem remarkable.

A father is in a small wooden boat, fishing. The water is calm. His children sit closely behind him, watching his every move. One of them says, with quiet confidence, “Dad is trying to get us food.”

It felt simple. Warm. Familiar.

It reminded me of countless scenes we rarely question — a parent doing what they must, children trusting completely, survival wrapped in love. It felt like one of those moments we instinctively label as good. Necessary. Right.

I would have moved on.

But then I looked again. This time beneath the surface of the water, and the story quietly changed.

Under the boat, a small group of fish huddles together. They are close, alert, afraid. One of them says the exact same sentence:

“Dad is trying to get us food.”

The words are identical.

The intention is identical.

But the reality is not.

That was the moment it stopped being just an image and became a lesson.

Because suddenly, I realized that life is all about perspective.

To the children in the boat, their father is a hero. A provider. A man doing what he must to keep his family alive. His struggle is noble. His effort is love made visible. In their world, he represents safety, sacrifice, and hope.

To the fish beneath the water, that same man is also a hero but at their expense. His survival means their loss. What feeds his children threatens theirs. What feels like provision above the surface feels like danger below it.

And here’s the uncomfortable truth: both stories are true.

We don’t like that. Do we?

We prefer simple narratives. We want heroes and villains clearly labeled. We want to believe that if something is good for us, it must be good in general. We like clean morality where goodness never costs anyone else anything.

But life doesn’t work that way.

Every blessing has another side. Every gain casts a shadow. Every success exists within a wider web of consequences we don’t always see, consequences we sometimes pretend not to know exist. At least, I beleieve we all know there are consequences to every action.

I think about how often we celebrate our wins without asking who paid the price. A promotion may come with someone else’s quiet dismissal. A thriving business may rest on unseen labor, long hours, and invisible sacrifices. The comfort we enjoy might exist because someone else is overworked, underpaid, or unheard.

This doesn’t mean we’re evil. We're just human.

The father in the boat isn’t cruel. He’s surviving. He’s doing what life has taught him to do. And let's switch it around a little; if the roles were reversed, the fish would do the same. Survival has no villains, only perspectives.

That’s the lesson that stayed with me.

Perspective doesn’t always change the facts, but it changes how we understand them.

If we only see life from the boat, we miss what’s happening under the water. If we only see from underwater, we forget the desperation in the boat. Wisdom isn’t choosing one truth over the other, it’s learning to hold both at the same time.

We can celebrate our blessings without arrogance.

We can succeed without cruelty.

We can acknowledge our wins without pretending they exist in isolation.

So I ask myself, and now I ask you:

How often do we pause to look beneath the surface of our victories and ask who else might be living a very different version of the same story?

Sometimes, growth begins not with guilt — but with awareness.