The Music of Words

I admit it. I got in trouble with ODFW (Or. Dept. of Fish and Wildlife) this weekend. And in front of my own kids no less!

It was a gorgeous day, so we packed the boys into the car with water and otter pops and hit the road.  We headed for a beautiful fish hatchery about 40 minutes away.  When we got there we found a fly fishing clinic going on.  Great Big Fish in a large pond with newbie fisherfolk intently, vigorously and joyfully flailing the water. 

After watching this show for a bit, I got curious.  “Just what would it take to entice one of these big, dumb monsters (the fish, that is)?”  A short while later…

“You can’t fish here!”

The ODFW officer wasn’t rude or belligerent, just very ‘matter of fact.’  “This is a private event and the lake is closed to any other fishing.”  He said his peace and strode by so quickly he didn’t see the stunned disbelief that had leapt onto my face.  That’s probably good, ’cause who really needs an argument.

But here’s the thing…  I was ‘fishing’ with the following gear:

• Rod – a 5ft long dead stick
• Line – 3 blades of grass knotted end to end to form one 20″ strand
• Lure – a 1/4″ round piece of something brown that fell out of a tree
• Hook – nada

According to the ODFW regulations angling means “To take or attempt to take fish for personal use by hook and line.”  Based on that definition I can’t find a single part of the regulation that applies.  There is no possible way I was going to successfully “take or attempt to take” fish, unless in a fit of laughter they accidentally slapped themselves out of the water and onto the dirt.  Even then, I had no hook.  And the best line I had available was “Hey baby, are you a Pisces?”

So why am I writing about this?  I’m not upset.  After all, Mr. Officer was just doing his job.  I’m writing about it because it brings to mind something we all do and rarely consider: predetermination.

We are very good at cataloguing personalities.  As people come through our lives we experience them, stick a label on their foreheads and stuff them into the appropriate file – friendly, demon spawn, brains of a turnip, etc.  This is convenient and effective most of the time.  However, it does make it terribly easy to predetermine a label before all the evidence is in.

For example, Mr. Officer probably stuck ‘brains of a turnip’ on me as soon as he saw something dangling.  And being polite, I returned the favor immediately.  The problem lies in our tendency to predetermine a character based on prior experience.  It’s easy.  The earlier we catalogue someone the quicker we’ll be able to estimate their responses and reactions.

But in ‘real life’ people are not so easily labeled.

Each life is filled with stories, crossroads, challenges and joys.  There is no ‘average person.’  We are all individual adventurers with our own tales to share.  The tendency to predetermine undermines this glorious truth.

When you find yourself labeling someone, step back and summon your curiosity.  Since we are more likely to pre-label those with whom we disagree, doing so further entrenches us in our own dispositions.  If we withhold the label and meet that individual with curiosity instead, we might just grow a little.  And that’s not such a bad thing.

On one hand, I would have liked Mr. Officer to come up to see what I was doing instead of presuming I had turnip for brains.  On the other hand, if he had I wouldn’t have had any reason to write this.  …which proves that fishing is great!  Even if all you have is a dead stick, grass and something brown you can still hook into something wonderful.

Cheers!
    Robert