It’s Called “Fishing,” Not “Catching”

One of our teachers, Victoria Garcia-Kelleher, talked in Thursday Day class the other day about how she went fishing with her kids. (She told us that she actually cut the worms with her fingernails and put the bait on the hooks herself, at which point I screamed and stuck my fingers in my ears.)

At one point she put her pole down to help her son, and she didn’t realize that her line was in the water. All of a sudden, her pole started to move down the dock. She grabbed it and started reeling in, and there was a gigantic fish on the end of the line!  (Yes, she put it back in the water.)

Vikki’s husband Paul said it was the biggest fish she’d ever caught.  Vikki said, “Well, I didn’t really catch it.”

Paul said, “You put the bait on the hook, you’ve been fishing for 25 years, it doesn’t matter how you reeled it in.”

Vikki told us that fishing was just like acting.  “You put your hook in the water, you have the bobber at the right depth so it’s not in the dregs, not pulling up leaves, you have the patience to spend ten thousand hours doing it, you enjoy the process.  That’s why it’s called fishing, not catching.”

I LOVED THAT!!!!  Fishing, not catching!  Get it?!

“It’s the same,” she said, “with acting.  You have to enjoy the process. We don’t get to act constantly.  Ninety percent of what we do is auditioning and preparing for the time we get to act. (Fishing.) So if you don’t love the fishing – the sitting on the dock, looking at the water, enjoying the breeze, catching the tiny, little baby co-stars — this one fish I caught?  Seriously, the worm was almost bigger than the fish, it was so tiny. But still, it’s fun to catch a co-star too, because you’re just enjoying the process of the fishing. It’s just not all about the catching.”

Thank you, Vikki!