"I Only Need Three More Years Before I Start Thinking Like A Fish" Making the Most of the Time/Responding to the Call

In “A River Runs Through It," ,after Paul lands a magnificent fish, Norman Maclean remembered his brother repeating the phrase, “All I need is three more years to think like a fish.” In fact, Paul said it twice and Norman remembered being “Surprised at the repetition.” Norman also recalls wondering if the river somehow must have told him that “we would receive no such gift.”

Events tumbled very quickly at this point in the story like the hard cascading river these men fished. Norman writes in the very next line, “For when the police sergeant early next May wakened me before day break, I rose and asked no questions. We drove down the length of the Big Blackfoot River. . . To tell my father and mother that my brother had been beaten to death by the butt of a revolver and his body dumped in an alley.”

I just recently spoke with my friend who, like myself, is a man at midlife. It was one of those rare soulful conversations that some times men engaged in while they fiddle with their tools. He said, “Anthony, I made up my mind that I am going to fish this spring. I am not going to spend every weekend at Home Depot and fixing things.” And we spoke about all the factors that can stop a man from going fishing.

I left our conversation thinking, “Some men still hear a “call” to live life,” (and to fish).

Do I need to state the obvious in regard to life being a gift and how we need to make the most of our time and that we don’t know how much time each one of us will be granted?

There are many sad stories of men at midlife who say, “All I need is 3 more years before I retire”….or,  “All I need is 3 more years before I have enough money saved,” or “All I need is 3 more hours to finish this project and then I will go fish,” and how sometimes, and tragically no such gift is received.

Make what you want out of this little story. All I know is for me, the call to fish is somehow a symbolic representation of the greater call to life itself.

Jesus once said, “I am the way, the truth, and the Life,” and in so many words said to “Drop everything.”   I think he knew what he was saying and sometimes even I begin to understand what that might mean.