Take Someone Fishing

Before beginning work with Generation Salaam, all the interns were required to read and watch some material explaining principles of community development. This included lots of valuable information, and it was cool to see how each perspective’s validity was affirmed by the ideas it had in common with entirely unrelated sources -- people in many different contexts are discovering and articulating some very similar ideas. One of these themes was the importance of helping a community to figure out how they can use their own resources to solve problems rather than fixing the problems for them. Many perspectives emphasized the danger of charity and encouraged empowerment as its alternative.

It was difficult to know what to do with this idea of refraining from charity, because it sounds a little like saying, “ helping people is not helpful” which is hard to hear. Robert Lupton even writes in Toxic Charity, “giving to those in need what they could gain from their own initiative may well be the kindest way to destroy people”. One resource quoted a saying that I’ve always disliked, “give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.”

It was this saying that really made me stop and consider why this idea was unsettling. I realized that for me, “teach a man to fish” has been distorted to mean “tell a man how to fish”. I’ve always seen this saying used as an excuse to hand someone an instruction manual entitled, “how to pick yourself up by your bootstraps” and call that “teaching” and never move from the comfort of one’s own privilege. I’ve always seen “teach a man to fish” used to oppose empathy.

At this point, it made sense that I felt weird about choosing not to give people fish. I felt like the only other option was telling people how they should be fixing their own problems. I think this is why my generation is so enthusiastic about giving -- we have seen the futility of instruction manuals, and we’re sick of them, and we’ve only seen those two options. But, the dichotomy between empty, unsustainable charity (giving out fish) and telling people to figure things out alone (giving instructions from afar) is what my dad would call a "false dilemma". They aren’t really the only two options.

I think if we went back to the original intent of the saying, it could be rephrased, “take a man fishing, and you feed him for a lifetime”. The option we’ve been missing is the one in which you go hang out with someone, see the way they’re currently trying to fish, see the resources and skills they have already accumulated, and walk with them through the process of figuring out the most accessible way for them to catch fish. Then, have dinner afterward and cook your fish together and sit and talk about your dreams and aspirations and affirm that this friend has value outside of the opportunity they’ve given you to fix a problem and be a hero. I wonder how different our communities would look if we reacted to need by first understanding a person and where they actually want to go. If we all got a little better at listening, not only would more people have all the fish they need, but we’d probably see a lot of innovation in the fishing industry from people who come into it with very different skill sets. If I really want to empower people, I'll start with recognizing they have the capacity to contribute to me as well.

So, the challenge here is to find someone this week to listen to. Who can you make time for and invite into a moment of your life? Who can you choose to learn from instead of overlook?