Being With Myself
That One Guy (TOG) likes to go fishing. He isn’t a fancy expert fisherman. He has a bunch of poles (I think a lot of poles) that he has picked up over the years from various second-hand stores. The way I understand it, he learned to fish off of YouTube videos. Compared to me, TOG is an expert fisherman.
I went fishing once or twice as a child. I was at sleep-away camp. We made fishing poles out of long sticks we found in the fields, and we hung string on them. Then we put hooks on the string. At the end of the hook, we put a small smushed up piece of bread. I don’t believe any of us caught a fish. We fished in the pond that was on the camp property. I’m not even sure if there were any fish in the pond.
Anyway, prior to 3 years ago, that was my only fishing experience. Then shortly after I met TOG, he invited me to go fishing with him. This was my first time REALLY fishing. I was curious. I might have even been a little nervous. Was he going to put the worm on the end of my line? (Yes.) Was he going to remove the hook from the fish’s mouth if I caught a fish? (Yes.) How long would it take to catch a fish? The first time? Not long. The next time? Forever.
Last year, during the depths of COVID, we went fishing more often. A big part of last spring and half of the summer, TOG was not working. Even when he was working, his hours were minimal so we were able to go fishing pretty often. I think this fact made TOG pretty happy. It made me...bored. Now don’t get me wrong, I really enjoy spending time with TOG. I enjoy nature. I enjoy quiet. But something seemed to happen when we went fishing more times that usual. I didn’t find it that interesting. I usually didn’t catch anything. I didn’t like seeing the other people around us having success catching fish. I started to feel self-conscious throwing out my line and watching it flop down right in front of me. I wondered what other folks thought when they saw my fishing attempts.
Sometime last fall, TOG picked up a more regular job and the fishing stopped. It’s hard to get up early when you worked late the night before. I was secretly relieved that the fishing stopped. I had gotten kind of tired of it.
So this last week when TOG asked me to go fishing, I hesitated. I remembered how bored I felt the last time I had gone fishing. That said, I care for TOG and I enjoy doing things with him. I like to do things that make him feel happy. One little morning of fishing wasn’t going to kill me. If that was a small act that I could do so that he felt happy, I would go fishing. We talked about our calendars and picked a time that would work for us both.
The morning we were going to go fishing my alarm went off at 5:15 AM. This early business is one of the things that I do not like about fishing. As a retiree, I don’t need morning alarms anymore. Yet I woke up and dragged myself out of bed. I had put my clothes out the night before so I wouldn’t have to think about them. I was dressed and ready at 5:35. By 6 AM, I was rolling down the road in TOG’s vehicle headed to the fishing space. When we arrived, the sun was just thinking about showing its face.
Generally, TOG is the guy that digs for worms and puts them on my hook. Sometimes I touch the wiggly bits, but mostly I don’t. Casting and pulling in my line is pretty much all I have to do. Oh, I take pictures of the fish too. On the offhand miracle that I actually catch a fish, TOG is the one who dons a glove and takes the hook out of the fish’s mouth so that we can throw it back in the water. Yes, we’re catch and release folks. I’m not sure if we are just catching the same fish 5 times or not.
When we arrived at our location, I noticed the signs of drought. The water level was super low. We ended up located in a space that was covered by water in our previous visits. I found a nice boulder to sit on and cast my line. Then I sat. And sat. The water was still like a piece of glass. There were nature sounds, and that’s all. It was incredibly quiet. I slowly watched the sun appear. It was a cloudy day, so the sunrise wasn’t super dramatic. Still, it represented the consistency of our days and filled the expectation that there would be a sunrise. I sat and waited. I waited for a tug on my line. I waited for people to show up. I waited for TOG to say something. Nothing happened. I started to get bored. I looked at my phone. I wasn’t expecting a message or the ability to read my email. The phone had no signal. I looked to see what time it was. It was about 10 minutes later than the last time I had checked my phone. I told myself that in 20 minutes, I could eat my granola bar. Then I ate it anyway. 10 minutes later, I told myself in 20 minutes I could drink my water bottle. Then I drank it anyway. Life seem to become a series of plans for the 20-minute future and then doing the thing now. Time was passing by super slowly. I kept casting my line and no fish responded. Well, that’s not true. Sometimes the line would come back with a little less worm on it. It seemed that the fish had become smarter. They would nibble a little bit of the worm but not enough to get caught on the hook. They must have been hanging out in schools (sorry, lame pun here, I couldn’t resist).
At some point along this journey in boredom, I suddenly relaxed into the situation. It probably wasn’t sudden. It was probably a gradual connection to the space, the air, and the water. But I went from being bored, to just being. I don’t know when it happened. I do know that somewhere around the 2+ hour mark TOG said, “Ok, forget it. We aren’t getting anything here; let’s just go.” At that moment I was suddenly disappointed. I had come to accept the space, accept sitting with myself, and now I was knocked from my reverie. It was time to go home.
Back I came to the city. Now the opportunity for a nap was enticing. I felt a little sad having disconnected with the self I had found near the water. Perhaps I can find the right combination of boredom and wonder in my own space so that myself and I can reconnect.
