Is the life you are living the same as the life that wants to live in you? -Parker Palmer, Let Your Life Speak
This month’s newsletter is about a salmon fisherman on the Fraser River in British Columbia.
What do I know about salmon fishing and those who receive their daily bread from the oceans, rivers, and lakes? Well, not much. But I do know this: Who I am called to be lies at the intersection of my deepest passion and what the world needs. And sometimes life’s passion is discovered in places that are worlds from my own.
The story about the salmon fisherman on the Fraser River was reported on National Public Radio (90.1 in Dallas), a news service that, in a world of massive media misinformation and downright mean-spiritedness, consistently serves excellence in reporting and intelligence in commentary.
But the gift of public radio in our information-sated but wisdom-starved culture is another story for another time. Back to the salmon fisherman.
His name is Robert McKamey and he’s fished the Fraser River all his life, as have several generations of McKameys before him. It’s his life’s work. And as we learned from the interview conducted by NPR’s Robert Siegel, it’s his life’s passion as well.
Now as noted above, before hearing the NPR story I knew next to nothing about salmon fishing. I had a sense of salmon spending some time in the rivers and some time in the oceans and it all having something to do with the word spawning, but that’s it. Thankfully, McKamey explains it all in the interview, most notably why this year is the best in memory for bringing in the salmon, a bonanza year after too many seasons of low activity and financial loss. But the catching of the salmon is not what the story is all about. It’s really about passion. In the middle of the interview, conducted by telephone while McKamey is on the river, bringing in the fish, Siegel asks about how much money he’ll be making this year, given the abundant catch. And McKamey’s response is timeless:
I’ve been fishing now for 30 straight hours and I never once thought about the money. I thought about the fish and about being a fisherman. And about my wife and I sharing this time together on the boat catching the salmon. And how it’s just time to go fishing for a bunch of fishermen who’ve gone through some tough times together, guys I’ve grown up with and fished with all my life, second or third or fourth generation fishermen. It’s just so nice to see the salmon coming back in the numbers that they are, and they are healthy and big and strong. I never gave any thought to the money.
There, in the simple words of a Canadian salmon fisherman, is what life’s passion is all about—doing the work without any thought to the money. For the very love of the work itself. For the pure bliss of being who you are called to be.
Robert McKamey is a blessed man, one who fully lives the life that wants to live within him. He has found his life’s passion; indeed, he lives his passion. And because of that he’ll never have to work a day of his life.