What are You Waiting For? The Distance is Shorter Than You Think

We milled the dock like real out-of-towners, taking in the pungent sea air and captivated by fisherman cleaning and filleting their catch in fluid motion. They wield a knife to a fish with the same muscle memory that I slap together peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, except they seem way cooler.  I’m rapt. 

We stop to watch the folks lining the docks to steward their crab pots. Raw meat and bones are are strung to the pots as bait. They time, toss, rotate and pull them in like I turn out loads of laundry. Yet again, this seems way cooler.

All things associated with sea life are foreign and interesting to me. The creatures that own the deep with their crawly legs or slippery scales and the ones that walk the docks in rubber boots and gloves, catching and cutting and tossing like they were born doing it. It looks different, feels different, smells different than home. And I love it.

As we watched, my daughter faltered on the dock just a bit and knocked one of her new birthday Birkenstocks into the sea, a fair representation of just how smooth we Westenbergs are on the docks. (Thankfully a crab pot came to the rescue of her shoe…and my blood pressure).

The following day we met up with some friends who, unbeknownst to us, had just learned the art of crabbing. They were eager to introduce us to the craft and less than 24 hours later we were in the same port we had been observers in, this time with rented crab pots, raw meat and bone bait. We awkwardly tried to learn the dance. 

Beginners

Tie, toss, time. Reel, release, repeat. With each pass we got a little smoother. We learned how to size the catch and determine the sex, how to pick them up and how not to. We learned which ones would be dinner and which must be returned to the sea.

Hours passed quickly and the rhythm became more natural.  Passersby would occasionally stop to chat. Most of them with dry shoes and hands, observers. They came with questions and interest. They wanted to see the crab and watch us work. Their children would tire of waiting, but they wanted to stay and watch us pull in just one more pot. They were captivated. And I realized, they were exactly who we were yesterday.

In 24 hours we moved from being the askers to the answerers, from landlubbers to the fisherman. We had never before tossed a pot or tied crab bait, pulled in a catch or boiled live crab for dinner. But we did. In one day we moved from being observers who accidentally drop expensive flip flops in the ocean to the ones reeling in dinner. 

Our education was vast and quick. We aren’t crabbing experts by any means but when you start from nothing and lean into something new, your knowledge increases exponentially. We were sponges.

I had to pull my husband from the dock. He only wished he had learned to do this sooner, taught his brothers, spent less time as an observer. 

Distance

It made me wonder how many times I have settled for being an observer, parked there. How many times have I watched from a distance, interested but not knowing quite how to get there from here? How many times have I quietly watched others on any given dock and assumed they were practiced experts, when they may have taken their first shaky steps 24 hours before me, just inches ahead?

This distance between where we are and where we would like to be is often shorter than we think. Like a mirrored fun house at the local fair we distort the distance, blow it out of portion, make it seem harder than it really is.

It helps to have a guide to shorten the gap, but there are plenty of ways to get there. Don’t let your mind play tricks on you. It isn’t easier for everyone else. The whole world is not more talented, more skilled, smarter. It’s likely they are just 24 hours ahead of you. Take a step. Be a beginner. There is a whole new world of opportunity and maybe even a crab dinner on the other side.