Flyfishing

Flyfishing

 Based on a metaphor submitted to ACBS by Richard Whitney

A good fly fisher knows exactly what the trout are feeding on and can tie up flies that imitate those insects. They are so good at this that the trout cannot tell the difference. They cast the fly into the stream right in front of the trout – the trout sees it floating by – buys that the fly is real, bites and gets hooked.

Our minds can be like really skilled fly fishers. Our thoughts and feeling are like really specific flies our mind designs and are just the ones we will bite on. Our mind casts them out on the stream in front of us – they seem so real to us and so we ‘buy’ them, bite and get hook.

Once we are hooked, the more we struggle the more we are behaving in ways that pulls the hook in further and keeps us on the line.

Funny enough, our mind can only tie flies on barbless hooks. It feels like we can’t get off, but if we pause from the struggle and spit the hook out – we are off the hook. Our mind will tell us there is a barb on the hook and we can’t get off – but if we stop struggling so hard, we get off the hook.

As we swim in the stream of life there are flies floating by on the surface all the time. As we get better at spotting ‘ that is just another fly floating by – I don’t have to bite’ we get hooked less often. But it is part of being human to get hooked on a regular basis. Remembering these flies are always on barbless hooks allows us to spend less time struggling, to get unhook and to then have the flexibility to swim in the direction our values let us know we want to.