You’re holding your mouth wrong.

In the spirit of this blog, consider the following fishing lesson story:

When I was twelve, I had a Boy Scout leader who was an expert fisherman. Our troop decided over the winter that we would have a week of fishing for our scout camp the following summer.

So our leader taught us all about fishing. We gathered fishing equipment until we all had very similar set ups.
Then we learned to tie flies. We spent a lot of time perfecting our flies, and learning why and how they would work and under what specific conditions.

Finally summer came and we headed out for a week in the Uintah Mountains of Utah.
We set up camp and then prepared our gear, and finally each of us took up a spot on the banks of a little nearby lake.

All of our equipment was very similar, and all the flies we had tied were very similar.

But a strange thing happened.

None of us boys were catching any fish.

Our leader, however, was having great success and was catching fish at a steady pace.
We watched our leader with growing annoyance.

What had he neglected to teach us? What was he holding back?

A few of us set down our poles and marched over to our leader and demanded that he tell us what we were doing wrong.

He surveyed the line up of boys along the shore of the little lake and chuckled.

“You’re holding your mouth wrong.”

I’ll never forget that answer.
I didn’t understand it at the time, but I’ve come to discover that each of us have talents that are difficult to explain or teach.

I believe that if we could find a way to share that special knowledge or ability that we alone possess, we could change the world.

What do you do, what do you know that is hard to explain? How could you teach it to others?

It might be hard to do, but think of the difference that it could make in our world.
No one wants to take away the thing that makes you special, we just want to understand it, so that we can learn to develop special abilities and knowledge of our own.

So, teach me how to hold my mouth.