I was talking with a friend about a trauma that I had struggled with years ago. There are specific people who, when I am near, the trauma would come back to haunt me. When I experience it, I go through a cycle of shame and self-loathing. So when I had recently re-encountered this person, I was surprised that I hadn’t gone through the cycle anymore – that I seem to have eased off the “gas” with my self-deprecation. There are many reasons why this might be the case, from the passage of time to my own hard work in mindfulness exercises. However, a more important revelation came at this moment from my friend.
He immediately begins sharing the story of fishing with his nephew. His nephew loves fishing and my friend wanted to be a good uncle, so he took this young boy out for an afternoon of fishing at a great location he knew of. For a better part of the day, he was pulling up fish as fast as he threw in the line. The boy loved catching the fish, but he hated touching them. So, being a good uncle, he helped the boy get the fish off the hook. The boy also hated putting the work on the hook. So, being a good uncle, he would get a work from the bait box and put it on the hook. My friend shared that he actually didn’t like doing these things, that he only did them because he wanted the boy to enjoy himself: to build good memories that the boy could look back on in his later years.
Fast forward some time later and this young boy has grown into a man. My friend, one day recalling all the poked fingers he got from fishhooks, asks his nephew if he remembers all the fun they had when they went fishing that day. The nephew simply shrugged his shoulders and said he had absolutely no memory of it. My friend concludes that after all that time and effort he had gone through, doing something he didn’t really care for to make a boy happy , his efforts had not mattered nearly as much to that boy. At least not as much to leave any sort of lasting impression.
I chuckled at this story, finding it to be a great transition from mine. Within my own story was a struggle with me over examining potential outcomes and finding fault with myself. Within my friend’s story was a struggle with holding onto outcomes that that had largely inconsequential outcomes. My friend finished with, “…I must have touched 50 of those damn fish, and it didn’t matter!”
I told him that we have a new rule now, the rule of 50 fish. If you are 50 fish into anything, it’s time to question your expectations. That is to say, we all tend to want things out of our various out of our mental clinging but the reality of what we want may not match our expectations. Sometimes all you’ll get are 50 stinky fish that you didn’t really want in the first place. Other times, you’ll be going through some high-level strategy trying to find the worst outcomes in things – but those overthought outcomes never manifest. My friend had unintentionally helped me arrive at this wonderful mindfulness tool to help keep my brain in check when it goes off the deep end. In the grand scheme of things, our grandiose ideas might not work out in the ways we think. Ergo, living mindfully may infact be a better than living through our imagined outcomes.
 | Stacy Mizrahi is an IT consultant, speaker, instructional designer and advocate of meditation. |
