Friday Story

Catching Fish In A Jar

When I was between eleven and twelve years old I decided one bright sunny day that it would be fun to go fishing. I didn't have any fishing gear and I had never done much fishing other than to play on the stream banks while my father fished. I also didn't want to "hurt" the fish I just wanted to catch them and then let them go.

I looked around the house for what I could use and I found a washed out old mayonnaise jar. You know the old style jars with the big open "mouth". I walked to a nearby pond and put the jar down in the soft dust-like mud of the water's edge with the open "mouth" of the jar facing toward the center. I then stirred the waters a little and made them cloudy so that the fish would have trouble seeing me. Then I waited hovering over the jar. Gradually, cautiously a small fish would swim up to the clear jar to investigate the disturbance and when it swam into the jar I dropped my hand into the water and over the jar mouth. I caught a fish, then another.

I just let them all go and returned my jar to the cupboard. Then I decided to use wire "box trap" to go fishing and rigged a string to the door. This way I could drop the trap in the water and not have to "hover over" it like I did with the jar. I sat very relaxed on the bank of the pond and sure enough I caught a fair sized bluegill. I took it home in a water filled plastic waste basket to show my dad and afterward returned it to the pond.
When I told people about how I had caught the fish they just paused and laughed nervously. You see unlike these people, I didn't know that you couldn't catch fish in a jar. If I would have asked them they would have scoffed and said, "You can't catch fish in a jar or a box trap!" No one in my life had ever dreamed of telling me that so my belief system did not contain these words or the impact that they would have had on my "day of fishing". Only a free minded kid could come up with an idea of using a jar or a box trap to catch fish! No one had told me that this was impossible so I just used what I was familiar with and what I had available and I succeeded.

Maybe today finds you facing a situation that seems impossible. You have a desire but no visible way of bringing it into being. You may need to find that "kid" inside you who thinks "outside the box" and the normal ways of achieving things and let him or her catch that fish in a jar! See your situation from a different angle. Start looking at the resources that you already have and the things that you are already familiar with. A fresh perspective and a childlike sense of wonder may surprise you and there's no telling what you will come up with!

Jami Sell