Remember that game Fish, two or more players battling it out asking the other for a specific number and if they had it then they’d hand all of that “number” over.  While playing the card game our feelings and trust do not get as hurt as our ego’s as we lose to the other, in real life it is a totally different matter.

We put out there a number that we need and get told time and time again go fish.  Soon it becomes much like the other players turning their backs on you as you call out the number you need.  Each time we call out a number and get refused our voices become weaker, quieter, softer.  Each time we get snubbed our walls grow taller, thicker, stronger, we become more and more self-reliant, independent and hard.

The numbers we call out in life are often not even verbally said or mentioned. Sometimes these very numbers are invisible to us but clear to others, as if we wear the “needed” number on our sleeve in bright neon glow.

Imagine calling out a number on a card continuously, your voice growing weaker and weaker, more faint each time the syllable leaves your lips.  Just when your energy is all but used up someone comes and hands you the very card that you’ve been calling out for.  Would you accept that card open armed or would you be tentative? Could it be a trick to your eyes? Could it be a figment of your imagination? What numbered card do they want in replacement of theirs that they give you?

After you have built all those protective walls around your soul, preparing for another storm, reassuring yourself time and time again that the number will never arrive and that a 6 must become a 3…  Would you accept the card?

What does the card game called Fish have to do with fishing poles?

There we lie in an exhausted heap on the floor weakly calling out for the numbered card we need when suddenly someone passes us a fishing pole to help is along our way.  What do you do? Do you take it or do you refuse it thinking that it is a ruse?

If we aren’t careful though we become blind to the fact that it is a fishing pole, we do not see it for what it is, a helping hand up.  We’ve called out so long that when we are given that hand up we are blinded by our fear and a plague of what if’s.

It is fine to “call” out be it silently, invisibly or loudly but we must remember to accept the fishing poles when they are given to us.

Life conditions us, give us a certain set of circumstances and no matter who you are you condition survivically towards coping with that “way”.  Unconditioning ourselves can be trying, difficult and “mind wrapped around a pole” at the best of times but it’s worth it.  Grabbing that fishing pole in order to get that number you’ve been calling is a blessing, a true gift of life

Why deny ourselves?