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On children, fishing and personal development
I still remember my first sea-fishing day with my father.
I will never forget when I first saw the ocean: I stood there staring in the cold winter morning, paralyzed by the mighty roar of waves dissolving into a ghostly haze as they crashed on the shore. That vision set me on a quest for freedom and changed my life for good – though I’ll probably never know whether it was for better or for worse. Ever since that day, water has been an obsessing need. Water symbolizes the purifying pond of redemption, but also nature’s untamed will, perennial movement, the eternal way to freedom… a rolling stone gathers no moss!
After spending the first 6 years of my life in an Eastern European landlocked country, in 1979 my parents decided to move to Western Europe. After a long journey and short stays in France and Madrid, around September we settled on the northwest Atlantic coast of Spain, moving into an apartment right in front of the beach, where I could see the ocean right from my window.
A starfish fallen from Andromeda – Vezendi
After some weeks, one day my father took me to a rocky beach close to our house, equipped with a long bamboo cane with a fishing line and a hook tied to its end. I was full of anticipation, and when I felt the first fish pull the line, I instinctively pulled back, so hard that I lost balance, fell into a pool behind me and bruised my butt. Of course there was no fish hanging on the hook, I was wet and my bottom hurt, but the very feeling of a fish hitting the bait was like a promise of something great: the possibility of actually catching fish had just become close enough to raise big expectations… and they were raised for good!
My father taught me to fish as soon as I was able to hold a rod in my hand, and the game quickly grew into a passion that has never left me ever since. I’ve been fishing around the world for the last 35 years, in all kinds of waters, with all kinds of gear, for all kinds of fish.
Take your children fishing: they’ll catch wonderful memories for life! Vezendi
This passion not only filled my days and nights with joy, but, more importantly, it also helped me get thru some of the most challenging moments in my life. Fishing is my safe haven, my refuge of peace: the cocoon that has always been there when I needed it, every time I had to get out of the rat race to regain my own peace of mind. Moreover, I’m deeply convinced of the benefits fishing had for my physical and intellectual development as a child.
In my childhood, there were only a few available lure types to choose from in the local tackle store, if I wanted something new or different, I had to craft it myself.
I used every imaginable junk around me to create makeshift lures, I used rusty bolts from the local scrapyard, torn panties to tie loose bait, orange-nets form the grocery to catch crabs and shrimps… Nowadays, in this globalized world most of us have the opposite problem: too much choice, too much stuff out there makes us feel overwhelmed.
More importantly, when we can obtain almost anything we want only by choosing on a screen, clicking on the “buy” button and introducing some 16 numbers, we are not forced to use our creativity, our ingenuity, and eventually it will stop developing and will begin to shrink. The reason is simple: our energy budget is limited, and our subconscious mind will stop directing energy to parts of our body, including our brain, that we do not use. When I last broke my left arm, I had it immobilized in a cast for 60 days: when the cast was removed my forearm looked like a toothpick: no muscle left!
Remember, if you don’t use it, you lose it!
Having to make do with what was available to fulfill a given function, rather than being able to obtain it readily from a shop, forced me to develop my creativity, and I know that is an asset that helped me in different situations all along my life. To me everything is possible, to me there are no problems, only solutions, to me a challenge is a gift… and that is probably thanks to those early fishing years.
So I’m deeply grateful for all the great fishing days out there that I’ll never forget, but still if I was to single-out one in particular: undoubtedly my choice would be the day my daughter caught her first fish on a deserted beach, somewhere in the Gulf Coast in Florida, when she was only 2 years old… and I hope my son will follow the same line!
If you can’t see’em, you won’t catch’em! – Vezendi
Of course, this principle applies to any skill you have, not only to fishing. Dancing, playing the guitar, repairing old cars, or any other wreck… whatever needs creativity and skill. I encourage you all to transmit your beautiful passion to your children, for that’s the best you can give them: a purpose for life and a source of happiness for their whole existence! And they need it now more than ever before, for the world has changed in many ways in the last 35 years. I, as many of you, spent most of my childhood playing outdoors, fishing, running, hiking, swimming, skateboarding, surfing…
Now most children and teenagers live in virtual world: they have virtual friends, they chase virtual insects, the see virtual trees, and instead of catching fish, all they catch are Pokemons, or who knows what!
Big hi-tech companies have the money to pay studies that will show whatever they want to prove: they’ll keep on telling us that living behind a screen is not bad, that it develops our intelligence, and so on. My dear readers, I’ll let you judge for yourselves, but when I see my daughter with her schoolmates, she may not have any “i-phone literacy”, but she moves fast, she’s extremely skillful with her hands, she has no fear of new things, and, more importantly, she always knows what she wants (I’ll write about the importance of knowing what is it that you want in life in a next post… many people feel they want something, but they have no idea what).
So my last words for today are: share your experience! Believe me: your fishing experience, or any other skill you have -no matter how deep or shallow- is an asset, a value that is worth transmitting to younger generations.
Your children will soon forget the last toy you bought them, but they will always remember every single day you took them out fishing with you, every hour spent on the shore, every moment fighting a fish. Always!
Take care and never forget to enjoy thoroughly every single day of your life: it may well be the last one, and it is the only one you actually have, anyway! The rest is just an illusion.
Get a life! Live it! Enjoy it! That’s all you have.
Vezendi
Alberto