Why I don’t go fishing : an extended metaphor

The fear of wasting my life is a patient fear – like a curmudgeon old man fishing on a stream, drinking beer. He sits on my shoulder fishing away, yacking at me to do something with my life he deems worthwhile. Every time I get some kind of accomplishment, he reels it in, examines it, frowns, then dumps it back in the stream. So I caste another line, like a whip cracking. I wait for my next fish. Which accomplishment will I be able to reel in, measure, then trade for the prize of peace?

In my young adult life, I remember feeling this kind of despair after being told I was our class valedictiorian. Something that was supposed to feel great, became a heavy weight. I felt no rush of relief, but the burden of the next fishing trip. My arms still ached from the reeling. But the fish was indeed, not big enough to provide any lasting kind of satisfaction. So I picked up my fishing rod again, intent on catching a bigger fish.

My college life mostly consisted of that same futile fishing trip — just in a different town. I fished for approval from professors, for A’s, for honor, for a future I thought might pass as successful. I often neglected my true passions in the sake of empty acheivement. That diploma didn’t even make much of a splash when the old fisherman tossed it back into the stream, nonchalantly. Again I felt that anxious, “now what?” feeling.

In college, I thought I wanted to be a lawyer. Considering I’m the least decisive/confrontational person I know, I can’t think of a profession less suited for me. The summer before senior year, I interned at my brother’s law firm. Barry took me to court sometimes to observe. It was obvious he was enjoying himself – there was a natural energy in him — a kind of charisma I admired and wanted but didn’t have naturally. I worried I didn’t have that kind of passion for anything besides tweeting silly jokes and writing bad break up poems. Through that summer, I went out to help him on his ranch on the weekends. I found that the office was just something I got through to make it to the weekend of ranching. It was like discovering a treasure I already had my whole life.

I will never regret my college experience. The ideas, the personal growth, the faith God grew in me there was exactly what I needed. However, I want to stress that education should not be used as a mere expensive bookmark or pause button on life, but a tool to live more richly in the real world of action. I think taking a year to intern and shadow different occupations would have really improved my college experience. The push for universities right after highschool is not a good thing. Instead of fishing for vague ideas of a life I thought would make me successful most of college, I might have been able to fully give myself to areas of study that suited me best.

While there are many things you can be and do, you should not necessarily do and be those things. Just because I could probably get through law school doesn’t mean I should apply. Just because I could move to rural India to teach English, doesn’t mean I should. This is where relationship with God is vital because we often don’t know what we should do. Here in the States we are often so privileged, the many choices of what to do with our lives is paralyzing. We become lost in the infinite amount of choices before us. Prayer is a must, as well as simply identifying our likes, dislikes, and natural abilities.

My alma mater introduced me to my favorite theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer – genius German pastor fellow who tried to kill Hitler and was martyred in the process. Bonhoeffer talks alot about vocation. According to him, vocation is “a place of responsibility, a calling to life that both answers the call of Christ and the call of fellow human beings in the real world.” For each person that call is different. Vocation is less about self actualization, but what the world needs. For now, I believe that call is here in my hometown. I have to stay close to the phone though, in case it rings to tell me to follow Jesus elsewhere. Although I hope that doesn’t happen any time soon.

After graduation, I knew the old fisherman on my shoulder would not be pleased with this decision to come home and ranch. Minnesota author Bill Holm echoes my adolescent feelings exactly: “At fifteen, I could define failure fast: to die in Minneota, Minnesota. Substitute any small town in Pennsylvania, or Nebraska, or Bulgaria, and the definition held. To be an American meant to move, rise out of a mean life, make yourself new” (The Music of Failure). I would definitely have agreed with the young Mr. Holms back in high school and in my early college years. For a lot of young adults, coming home seems like failure – like you couldn’t make it in the “real” world. You’re the perpetual prodigal son who got sick of the partying and pig slop. It seemed like success was something only obtainable away from home. Which simply isn’t true.

So here’s my rambling main point: academia for academia’s sake is meaningless. Accomplishment for accomplishment’s sake is meaningless. I wish someone would have told me this in highschool or maybe passed me a copy of  Slyvia Plath’s unabridged journals. However, I’m not sure I would have listened to you or Sylvia if you’d tried to tell me.   After 20 years in school, Plath felt alienated from the real world: “it is often tempting to hide from the blood  & guts of life in a neat special subject on paper where one can become an unchallenged expert.” Academia can fast become an excuse not to act, to mingle with the “blood and guts” — where true life is found.) If knowledge is not paired with action, it’s wasted time. Like faith without works. I realized my post grad plans for more education were really just a postponement of my life and the responsibility therein. (That’s not the case for everyone, of course.)

Now I get to pursue knowledge to accentuate the life I have now, and not just for the sake of empty achievement. Learning is much more exciting this way and memorable. Transforming ideas into concrete action is magical. I definitley don’t live by that old fishing spot anymore, but sometimes I find myself right there on the stream, listening to the disappointed drawl of the fisherman go on and on about the fish I’ve caught, all dead on the shore. I have to get tough with the guy. After all, he’s just my wrinked up adolescent ego. My pride, I suspect, will never stop hassling me to MAKE SOMETHING OF YOURSELF FOR PETE’S SAKE! But my mission isn’t to make something of myself, but to make much of the God who “considers the foolish in order to shame those who think they are wise” and “chose things that are powerless to shame those who are powerful.” (1 Corinthians 1:27) I get to wake up conscious of the presence of a God who doesn’t care much for titles, or those little letters after your name. I get to help take care of this beautiful slice of earth and its many creatures — to “look up in perfect silence at the stars.”

When I heard the learn'd astronomer, 
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in 
columns before me, 
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to 
add, divide, and measure them, 
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he 
lectured with much applause in the lecture-
room, 
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick, 
Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by my 
myself, 
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to 
time, 
Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars. 

-Walt Whitman (When I heard the Learn'd Astronomer) 

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