Yes, The Fish Rots From The Head Down

This idiom "THE FISH ROTS FROM THE HEAD DOWN" is purportedly as old and dating back as far back as the 1600s.  BUT there has been NO consensus WHETHER this originated from the Greeks, Turks, Chinese or elsewhere.  Regardless, let's make the most of it, the fact that this idiom does exists.  Of course, biologists are the first to disagree that the fish head gets rotten first because they argue, it is the intestinal system of the first that first gets rotten.  For now, let's agree that the FISH ROTS FROM THE HEAD DOWN📘📙📗

Regardless, it has become a very common metaphor that we hear from time to time.  With just one too many examples to rattle off.  Let's start off with countries.  WHERE the Head of State OR Government does NOT run the state of affairs as he is expected to be, the whole country could run aground.  A giveaway example is North Korea [BUT we WON'T politicize that farther].  Let's look back at corporate organizations that have collapsed.  NOKIA [although they are trying to 'rise back from the dead for now'].  Kodak.  Enron.  PanAm.  Oh yes, even that old family favorite Polaroid.  Swiss Air.  Arthur Andersen.  Yes, even WorldCom.  BUT if they share one commonality, we'll go back to the idiom that the FISH ROTS FROM THE HEAD DOWN, unfortunately💧💧💧

Enough of those conglomerates.  Let's zoom-in deep enough into our lives.  HOW many family-related problems could have caused or presipitated the breakups of families?  And without pointing fingers as EACH STORY IS UNIQUE, yet it's inevitable that we look up at that idiom again, that the FISH ROTS FROM THE HEAD DOWN.  If we look for the parallelism whether it's the country's state of affairs, the corporate goings-on OR the personal/family circumstances, it is fairly effortless and very non-argumentative to posit that IF ONLY the 'HEAD' of a country, corporation OR a family is good enough, then there is a fairly good chance failures are averted💥💥💥

We can even look at organizations on a smaller scale.  It could be the school's PARENTS-TEACHERS Association or the neighborhood's HOMEOWNERS Association.   After a year OR so, we could hear allegations and brickbats coming from both sides of the fence, blaming each of the key players LIKE:  Things were running smoothly WHEN our organization was headed by Mr John XXX.  BUT with our incumbent prexy, sadly, HE CAN'T HOLD OUR TEAM TOGETHER, hence this chaos OR confusion causing our group to run aground much like the great Titanic ship suddenly facing that tragic end.  And the common refrain we would hear from so many wannabes, IF ONLY our team was headed by Mr John etc.  IF ONLY the head of the family DIDN'T go astray.  One too many WHAT IFs❌❌❌

Our takeaway:  To be fair and just, let us NOT shoot out premature and baseless judgments solely based on innuendoes, hearsay and at best, half-truths because more often than NOT, it TAKES 2 TO TANGO.  There are NO tyrants WHERE there are NO slaves.  THERE are NO villains WHERE there are NO victims.  As it is, we are always the reminded that there are 3 sides of a narrative.  HIS version.  HER version and the legitimate version.  At the end, we run a full circle back to the idiom that the FISH ROTS FROM THE HEAD DOWN😡😡😡

The Fish Rots From The Head Down

 The Fish Rots From The Head Down

Borrowing a French expression, "The Fish Rots From The Head Down" is something more than just another no-brainer because logic and rational do tell us that, that exactly what it really is.  But why are we spending time on this today?  It's because some of us tend to be off-track sometimes, thinking that to get rotten does NOT really start from the head down?  How often have we heard stories wherein a previously successful person suddenly went down on a tailspin because everything went up to his head until that head was outsized and too much for him to handle📌📌📌

Back into our lives, how relevant is this French expression that "The Fish Rots From The Head Down"?  Heard of stories back in school when we had a classmate who was the perennial #1 in class year-on-year until, one day, his scholastic standing just went down the drain as fast as that shooting star cruising down fast to Earth❓❓❓

And who's our worst enemy?  More often, our enemy is our very own self.  Think when our EGO grows beyond normal proportions such that most of the things we need to undertake are more influenced and dictated by our outsized EGO rather than rational thinking lording it over us.  And when our EGO takes over our own self, does this dovetail that "The Fish Rots From The Head Down"

By the time our workplace becomes our secondary home, we would have fully adjusted day-in day-out until such time you steadily go up the ranks, at least from a tenure perspective.  And this is when I could attest having witnessed "The Fish getting rotten From The Head Down" because often, our outgrown and outsized EGO would literally take over our self📌📌📌

So what's our cheat sheet to avert and disprove that "The Fish Rots From The Head Down"?  This poster says it all.  EGO, kill it.  LOVE, value it.  SMILE, keep it.  GOSSIP, ignore it.  SUCCESS, achieve it.  JEALOUSY, distance it.  KNOWLEDGE, acquire it.  CONFIDENCE, trust it.  In a nutshell, what this tells us that when you plunge into the waters, split and divide the waters the way the Red Sea's waters parted apart.  Most importantly, we need to disprove that "The Fish Rots From The Head Down"📕📗📘