Why
By Neil M. Travis, Montana/Arizona
"This too is vanity. For there is no lasting
remembrance of the wise man as with the fool, inasmuch
as in the coming days all will be forgotten. And how
the wise man and the fool alike die!"
The Holy Bible 1 Ecclesiastes 2: 15-16
From the vantage point of three score and five years
much of what passes as the good life appears to be
vanity. We strive after that which does not last;
we chase the dreams that, like the wind or quick
silver, slip through our fingers without a trace.
"Vanity of vanity, all is vanity and striving after
the wind," wrote King Solomon, and what was true
those thousands of years ago is no less true today.
I have been cursed with the insatiable desire to
know the motivation behind why things are the way
they are. Do you know why you chase fish with a fly?
If you were pressed to give a logical reason for the
hours you have spent pursuing an activity that is
unlikely to ever put one thin dime in your pocket
what would you say? Precisely, why do we do what
we do?
Some things are obvious. For most of my life I got
out of bed each weekday and occasionally on the
weekend and went off to work. The motivation was
the love of my wife, and my desire to secure the
means to make her happy. In addition, the pay check
allowed me to indulge myself in my rather pricey
hobbies like fly fishing, fishing boats, hunting
rifles, and all the rest of the paraphernalia that
I thought were necessary.
What is less obvious is what motivated me to chase
trout with a fly rod, stalk big game with a bow, or
sit in a blind in the predawn darkness cursing the
cold and hoping that a dumb duck would drop into my
decoy spread. I don't keep trout, I had a freezer
full of prime beef, and except for me no one at my
house particularly liked wild duck for Sunday dinner.
For many years every available minute of free time
was spent pursuing one of my many outdoor pursuits,
and I would have been hard pressed to offer a concrete
motive for most of it. As a person who perceives himself
as a logical fellow such an admission was hard to swallow.
It wasn't until last summer that I finally realized
what the motive was for all the time I spent chasing
fins, fur, and feathers. Surprisingly it had little
to do with many of the things I thought were my motives;
beautiful places, challenge, curiosity, fun, camaraderie,
or any of the myriad other reasons I might have used as
justification. It did not come to me in a sudden flash
of inspired insight, some existential rationalization
based on observed facts, but as the result of deep despair
and emotional exhaustion.
Last summer after spending a couple hours fishing my
favorite trout stream I realized that, for a short
time, I had forgotten all of issues that were
weighing so heavily upon my heart. For a brief
time the weight of the world had been removed
from my shoulders, the concerns that marked my
daily life at that time had been left behind,
and by pursuing that which was without any true
importance in my daily affairs I was able, if
only for a few brief moments, to reinvigorate my
lagging spirit and find hope for yet another day.
It was not exactly a eureka moment, and the light
bulb didn't suddenly light up over my head, but it
was a more gradual realization that although
fly-fishing might not be vital to my daily
affairs it does have an important place in
my life, and there is a logical reason for
doing it.
Fly fishing, and many of the other seemingly
meaningless pursuits that I have pursued,
provides a place where I can retreat when
the real world becomes too real. On a trout
stream I can engage in an activity that can
totally captivate my mind to the extent that
all the nasty things that may be filling my
daily routine are forgotten, if only for a
short time. In a real sense the value of fly
fishing may just be that it has no value. The
world will not end if I fail to hook a fish,
economic disaster will not engulf me if I
choose the wrong fly, a bad cast will not
ruin my career, and any one of a host of
decisions I make when I am fishing will
disappear like ripples created by a stone
cast into the water. No one will be richer
or poorer because I bobbled a cast, missed
a rise, or spooked the best fish of the day.
The fact that it is so totally unimportant
makes it so vitally important. And, at the
end of the day, might just make it the most
important and logical activity I could
possibly do. ~ Neil M. Travis, Montana/Arizona
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