Gone Fishin'
It’s a sunny summer day. Not very hot, and there is this nice breeze blowing every now and then which makes it really nice to be outside. Not many mosquitos, so I—unusually—feel like grabbing that fishing rod which is laying in a corner of the cottage I am renting for some well-deserved holidays, and going to the pond next to the house, sitting on that rudimentary, rusty dock over there. So, I go and get some worms from the woods nearby, and I prepare the bait hoping that fish will—quite literally—die to get a bite. Last time I went fishing, I was maybe 13 years old. Anyway, everything is more or less set, I have also prepared some snacks. So I cast the hook to the water, then I sit and wait. And as it usually happens when I am given any free time, I start overthinking, so a question starts to fly around me like a horse fly:
Is fishing—as in, actually catching a fish—based on just pure luck? Or is there any skill involved here?
If you asked a professional fisherwoman or fisherman, of course they will say skill is everything, and rightly so. They have practiced for ages to master the art of catching fish. But the question is particularly about me, a fishing neophyte, at that time and in that particular place in Finland on that particular mild summer day.
Luck or skill?
Well, in the short run, it looks like it would be pure chance. I mean, for example, I have not checked if there is actually *any* fish in that pond at all. What if it’s just stagnant water? I could be waiting for something which may never ever happen.
On the other hand, in the long run, as I would gain more understanding of the overall situation, I may start bending the odds in my favor. If I manufactured a fishing net instead of using a hook, my chances would increase. In the extreme case, if I created a hypothetical net the exact size and volume of the entire pond, fishing would become a solid certainty—although an environmentally questionable one.
I ponder, would that be skill or resolve? Are they the same thing?
Even in the short run, I am shifting the odds to my own court just by spending energy hooking that unfortunate invertebrate and tossing it to the water; I am biasing the dice, so to speak. Pure luck would mean me standing next to the pond with a plate in my hands and waiting for a fish to jump out of nowhere and land exactly on the plate.
As I sit there munching the nth potato chip waiting for a fish which may even not exist, I think about this, and how luck, skill and determination define the outcomes of what we do. Succeeding or not in anything requires a balance of all that, and depending on what we do—and especially what we do not do—the variables in that equation move around.
I reflect, we’re always fishing for something, figuratively speaking. For a job, for fame, for customers, or a partner. Lucky ones with no skills—practical or emotional—are destined to waste their catch. Skillful and determined ones without any luck are destined to be on the lookout for life. Skillful and resolved with a tad of good fortune are the ones hitting it big. Problem is, they may underestimate the role luck may have played and think too high of themselves.
Our skills and determination act like fishing nets. They do not guarantee per se a catch, but they—at least infinitesimally—change the odds in our favor, if there’s anything out there. Of course factors outside of our control matter a lot, things as ridiculous as the letter our names start with1 or even the month we were born2. But, we do have some latitude to increase our fishing net sizes, therefore increasing the chances of capturing what we want. We may never be able to fully encompass the absolute size of the “pond”, but at least something better than a thin, tiny, overoptimistic hook.
A vibrating feeling in the fishing line brings me back from my daydreaming. A fish has taken the bait. I feel I am in good luck. The fish and the worm feel exactly the opposite.
https://ppw.kuleuven.be/okp/_pdf/Laham2012TNPEW.pdf
https://www.inc.com/kathleen-kim/born-to-be-ceo-birthdays-determine-career-success.html