The Fence of Knowledge

Grow-Up Time 


This Lobster Wharf is off of inner Boothbay Harbor.  The Lobster (pronunced "Lob-stah") Boats line up at docks and tied to moorings.  Before sunrise, the boats set out regardless of weather and are generally back with the catch between 2-3pm.  It is over this fence of knowledge that you see the boats go and return. 

What is the fence of knowledge?  It has a lot to do with on the job training and experience.  There is an old saying in Maine that is passed on from one generation to the next which takes to Lobstering.

"Before you go out on the waters,
you don't believe what others tell you.

Once you get out on the waters,
you don't believe what you tell yourself."  

The critical step in training is that each apprentice has a mentor or coach.  The apprentice must first pass basic sea-skills with the traps, lines and baiting--and to know how to take the helm and maneuver the boat into some tricky areas.  What's left to learn?
--Reading the weather (are the lobsters moving around or staying put?),
--Reading the weather--(are you about to go out into a Nor-easter?),
--What's the best way to set your traps and how can you --keep from tangling somebody else's traps?

This requires a mentor...who bestows a sense of avocation for lobstering which either gets into  your blood or not.

Look below--a much smaller boat, but you still see that there are two people in the boat.  You can count on one being the experienced mentor and the other the apprentice.  (And that fishing is good--look at the seagulls!) 

What ultimately matters is not what is taught--because lobstering is an avocation that is caught. Ironic isn't it--the ones who catch lobsters must first be caught themselves!

So what is your passion in life--not necessarily a job, but what did you "catch"  that sets you in hot pursuit of your interest?  I will bet that somewhere along the line, you saw something in a mentor which you wanted so badly for your life--that you just went out and followed the example until it became YOU.

  Parting Question...

It is said in Maine that you haven't learned "lobstahing" until you have trained an apprentice.


So I am just wondering....   

If you crossed the fence of knowledge with a mentor--
are you ready to be that mentor for somebody else?