06/07/2026
The Fish Gets a Choice Too
A couple of evenings ago, we stood on the pier watching the sun settle lower over the water while a little girl fished beside her Popeye.
It was one of those evenings that felt good for no particular reason. The air was soft. The water was calm. Nobody was in a hurry.
Earlier, we had watched a crane hunting along the shoreline. For nearly an hour, it seemed to catch fish every time it dipped its beak into the water.
The little girl noticed.
She notices everything.
Then she spent the next hour listening carefully to her Popeye.
How to hold the rod.
How to cast.
How to reel.
Which bait to use.
Question after question after question.
And he answered every one.
She tried hard that evening. Really hard.
She listened. She learned. She practiced patience, which may have been the hardest part of all.
But the fish weren’t biting.
Finally, she looked up and said something that made all of us laugh.
“Maybe that crane ate all the fish.”
It made perfect sense to her.
The crane had been successful.
She had not.
Surely the crane was the problem.
The funny thing is that adults do that too.
When something doesn’t work out, we often start by looking around for someone or something to blame.
Somebody got there first.
Somebody got the opportunity.
Somebody took what should have been ours.
Somebody ate all the fish.
But after a while, she moved past the crane and asked a much better question.
“Why is it that I’ve done everything you’ve told me to do, but I’m still not catching anything?”
And for a moment, standing on that pier, it felt like she wasn’t talking about fish anymore.
Because sooner or later, every one of us asks that question.
I’ve worked hard.
I’ve prepared.
I’ve listened.
I’ve learned.
I’ve done everything right.
So why isn’t it working?
The answer, I think, is that doing everything right does not guarantee a particular outcome.
It simply prepares us for the opportunity when it comes.
We control our effort.
We control our attitude.
We control whether we learn, whether we listen, whether we show up.
But some things remain outside our control.
As it turns out, the fish gets a choice too.
Not every empty hook is a failure.
Sometimes it simply means the fish weren’t biting.
And sometimes the greatest lesson from the pier isn’t how to catch a fish.
It’s learning that your job is to be ready when one finally does.
