Find Your Inner Salmon

Besides tasting great, the Alaskan Salmon provides a metaphor that I hope will make sense. I often don’t make sense when I reach for and invent analogies. Nevertheless, the Alaskan Salmon spend 1-3 years in preparation for a journey out to sea with a group of like-minded swimmers. They then spend 1-8 years in sea water before readjusting their bodies to fresh water and swimming upstream to spawn and lay eggs. The final swim is against rushing rapids and up water falls as they relentlessly seek the waters in which they were born. And when they arrive, if they’re not eaten by wild animals or caught by fishermen, they lay their eggs and die within 1-2 weeks. So I guess every Salmon is an orphan.

There are two characteristics I long to develop continually and both are akin to the heart of the Alaskan Salmon. Resilience is one and commitment the other. Resilience is the fight to respond to perpetual adversity, not just a one-time setback. It’s the quality that can only be forged by multiple failure and the minute we choose to fold our hand, resilience cannot be realized. The Salmon is threatened by water at varied amounts of pressure per square inch. There is no reason why these fish should be able to complete their journeys but they refuse to buckle.

Commitment is the resolve to complete what has been started based on a healthy perception of what is at stake. I’ve heard people universalize commitment as if we must finish every single thing we start. But if that were true we’d see a lot more failed marriages because people too afraid to break off engagements decided to finish. Or, to use myself as an example, I would have never stopped crying about basketball aspirations and endlessly pursued it to no avail. The reality I’m learning is that Salmon-like commitment means you understand why you’re committed.

When you’re called to be something, to do something, to change something the interruptions will be profuse. That’s the nature of the stream you’re swimming against. That’s why we need resilience. But it’s knowing why we’re swimming opposite the majority of people that sustains a proper commitment. There is a time to cease one action and rejoin the swim against the assimilated and the communities that just do the drill. Compromising self, family, faith, etc. are unacceptable commitments and that breed the opposite of resilience. If you read this post, maybe you and I can help one another find our inner Salmon.