Boiling Frog : The frog never knew it was going to die.
06-sep-2026 · Goa
We all know the story of the frog that boiled itself to death in water. It never knew it was getting boiled. We get boiled too, if we embrace the status quo.
If you had asked the frog at the start of the experiment, "Are you going to die?", it would probably have said, "Hell no." It couldn't anticipate that simply staying there would eventually kill it.
Our lives are often like this. We tend not to see what is happening outside our bubble, and eventually we succumb to it. This is true across cultures, relationships and work.
Our bubble defines our identity.
I have ~worked~ across organizations with very different cultures, or call them bubbles, and I have noticed this pattern repeatedly. You are shaped by what surrounds you, and eventually that becomes a hallmark of your identity. Noticed the same in my ~coaching~ too.
When I was growing up in Hyderabad, India, and had entrepreneurial ideas, I was often looked upon like a weirdo.
Who is this kid? Why doesn't he have a sense of what security is?
Had I been born in Silicon Valley, perhaps I would just have been a normal kid.
The question is: do we have the ability to look beyond the confines of our bubble?
I moved out of home at the age of fifteen. As I kept moving between places, environments and cultures, I realized that my view of the world was changing. Each new environment gave me another lens through which to look at the previous one.
Whenever I get stuck, I think about the frog.
And perhaps that has kept me alive.
When I look at people around me today, I often try to understand which bubble they are operating from. Someone who has lived with their parents all their life may see the world very differently from someone who has not lived at home since fifteen.
Neither view is necessarily right or wrong. But both are shaped by the environment in which they were formed.
Perhaps the beauty of life becomes visible only when, once in a while, we step outside the bubble. sssh…Don’t become a frog.
ps: Want to read about why being useful is overrated. What changes when usefulness stops being the measure of a meaningful life? ~useless~
2026-09-06, Goa