Fish don’t exist. It’s quite a simple concept, though I suppose I should elaborate. 

Language, and the way we use it, comes from the innate human need—not desire, need—to categorize. We create words so that we can express new, unknown, or indescribable concepts in a concise manner. We pull these words together into sentences to layer complexity, to orient ourselves in the chaos and the uncertain and to find our place among it. This applies to more than just words; we fear the unknown, so we do what we can to know it.  

And somehow, we always fall short. 

In her nonfiction work Why Fish Don’t Exist, Lulu Miller tells the story of naturalist David Starr Jordan and his fight against this same uncertainty. Jordan spends much of his early life learning, naming, and categorizing—skills he eventually uses in the scientific field. At a young age, he begins collecting natural specimens and drawing maps, attempting to learn the names of as many local flowers as possible. When his mother begins to throw away his work in disapproval, Jordan continues, anyway, with unmatched determination. 

Alongside the story of Jordan, Miller tells her own story, describing her search for order and purpose within her thoughts. When she is young, her father—a scientist—repeatedly mentions to her that life is meaningless. To him, this lack of defined purpose means freedom, but to her, it is disorienting and dangerous. Her father’s perspective prevents him from understanding Miller’s struggles with mental health, which causes her, in turn, to fall further into fear.

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I spend much of my time thinking about the way that I think. I can feel myself move in circles. I’m tangled in time, perhaps. Moments of movement and change swirl around my head, as though dancing. 

At the end of high school, I struggled with the idea of starting again. I was excited by the prospect of a new experience, but comfortable in my bubble of friends. I feared losing old connections in the process of making new ones. I didn’t think about much else for a while. Historically, I do not deal well with the unknown.

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Persistence ultimately becomes the theme of Jordan’s professional life. He begins to study fish and collect them, fascinated by their appearances and behavior. Inspired by Darwin’s newly published On the Origin of Species, Jordan considers working in the field of taxonomy, a decision driven by his battle against nature’s entropy. He begins to dedicate his life to acts of finding and identifying. 

Miller, on the other hand, struggles with identity. As this uncertainty takes over Miller’s life, her mental health begins to decline, and she spirals. She finds herself desperate for a guide or a path to follow. Then, she finds the story of Jordan and begins to see him, and his persistence, as a sort of example to look to. 

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As I started college, I immediately began to fall into endless, inevitable worries about the future. I was initially excited to begin something new, but the brilliance of novelty quickly faded into panic. I became overwhelmed by my lack of definition, questioning my self-imposed conception of myself. If I wasn’t engaging in activities that defined my previous life experiences, was I even the same person? 

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To Jordan and Miller, this process of naming the unnamed becomes a philosophical act of rebellion against the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Defining something new makes it, in some sense, real; things that lack names cannot be referenced without difficulty. After teaching at several colleges, Jordan takes a position at Indiana University, later becoming president. He continues to expand his collection, working tirelessly to discover and map more than ever before. However, the 1883 fire that burns down his laboratory also takes with it thousands of new, unnamed specimens of fish. Somehow, this delay doesn’t slow Jordan down. He begins collecting again, storing tags in the fish jars to name them more securely, and works to rebuild his collection. Soon thereafter, he moves to California to become president of the newly founded Stanford University. 

However, an earthquake once again manages to destroy his collection. Specimens and their nametags are scattered throughout his lab, and it is impossible to pair them together. Yet, as soon as the building is safe to enter, Jordan gets to work, identifying the fish he could and sewing name tags onto the specimens themselves. 

This detail of Jordan’s life drives Miller to begin writing about him, inspired by his stubborn persistence to overcome the world’s chaos. In doing so, she believes she’s found her own purpose and motivation. Jordan, to her, becomes a symbol of hope and determination in a world she finds chaotic and cruel. She begins to look up to him, admiring his endless quest to know. 

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Throughout freshman year, I began looking to my past for purpose. I spent hours reading old pieces of writing and staring at art I’d made, searching for meaning in the old me. I fell deep into regret, thinking that the person I was becoming would be a disappointment to the person I’d wanted to become. I struggled to balance life and leisure; I worried too much about the past and not enough about the future. I began chasing an ideal self from an old me. 

So, I decided to make a change. I discovered that uncertainty was not an obstacle for me, but rather a requirement. I needed to be somewhere that allowed me to try more. I moved across the country, and I began again.

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However, Jordan’s obsessions with taxonomy, categorization, and evolution eventually leads him down dark paths. He becomes obsessed with dangerous ideas of biological “purity” that lead him to the concept of eugenics. He begins to advocate for forced sterilization, convinced that this same sort of biological preservation, a survival-of-the-fittest mindset, is the only way to preserve the human race. 

Miller, upon discovering this, is horrified; the person whose story she’s relied on and found her truth in holds values that disgust her. She begins to fall into yet another struggle of identity and meaning; if the person who dedicated his entire life to finding order among chaos was broken by its inevitability, how could she possibly find her own purpose? 

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I quickly found myself returning to fear of uncertainty. Being a new person in a new place meant being free-floating, and this lack of tether brought me back down into spirals. I began questioning my decision to leave behind whatever comfort I did have, and, in turn, questioned my motivation for moving in the first place. I was overwhelmed by a sort of guilt; I had gotten what I wanted—and what so many others want, too—but I wasn’t happy. I felt let down; I’d reached this “ideal me” from a past self, but it wasn’t what I wanted. If my purpose wasn’t what I thought it was, then how did I find a new purpose? Was starting again even possible?

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The answer to this question is, of course, the statement posed at the beginning of this work: fish don’t exist.

Despite spending his entire life working to define and organize the category “fish,” phylogeneticists determine well after Jordan’s death that the term “fish,” much like “tree,” for instance, is a simple broad label, but not itself a taxonomic category. Fish, evolutionarily and taxonomically, don’t exist. Jordan has lost his battle with chaos, and his life’s purpose, which Miller so determinedly turned to, is upended and identified to be nothing more than an impossibility.

At last, because of this, Lulu Miller finds relief. The path of Jordan’s life proves to her that categorization leads only to hierarchy, which, in turn, leads to injustice. Miller presents the importance of “giving up the fish” as looking to the world’s nuances and details for purpose rather than looking for binaries and forcing structure upon ourselves. “Giving up the fish” means letting go of both externally imposed and self-imposed restrictions. Everything is everything, and anyone can be anyone.

Humanity’s intense fear of uncertainty is not a struggle worth engaging in. We so easily throw away meaning and emotion because we do not understand the unlabeled. The undefinable, however, is the first place we should look for meaning. 

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Just as Miller does, I’ve come to realize that there is no merit in labeling myself or my purpose. I’ve found myself settled into a new start and, slowly, I work to embrace the vacancy that is not knowing. It’s taken time and it will continue to take time, but this ambiguity of purpose excites me; I’m “giving up the fish.” 

I spend more time dreaming now than I do regretting. I find comfort in living with patience, and I do what I can to do what I can. It’s nice to love a lot of things, and to not have to choose just one. 

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