The Cast Net

March 13, 2009 by Mary Wynne-Wynter 

I spent several autumns fishing in Menemsha on Martha’s Vineyard.
picture-2I found myself thinking today about how I loved watching really experienced fishermen cast net for Menhaden, a prized bait fish that sometimes swam in schools close to shore and the jetty. I admired their skill, grace and timing and the cast net scenes had a fascinating archetype quality.

Today, its my change metaphor. Typically we identify with the caster. We learn the skills, get the tools, make a plan, set the goal, identify the target, try again and again, and eventually succeed and get the fulfillment we expect, or we give up and try something else.

But circumstances are raising awareness that our identification with the caster’s control is illusory. We feel more like the cast: flung out and spinning in mid-air.

Often, the response to that insecure feeling is to give away our power to the caster – the shifting external reality, those difficult experiences and circumstances, the things that we don’t want to be happening to us. The caster is the cause and us in free-fall the effect.

We can change this by shifting our reality: life, always on our side, is the caster and we are the cast. We entrust the ways, means and timing to life – the divine. Instead of free-fall and fear, we’re suspended, yet prepared and poised to claim the best probable outcome at the right place and time.

Filed under: disruption, metaphor, self-awareness, shift
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