The tallest one-word compliment I ever got in my life came from a high school English teacher, Bill Schoff, who was tasked with providing one word to describe a student upon their graduation from Germantown Academy in Fort Washington, Pennsylvania.
Mr. Schoff was a magnificent writer who contributed to The New Yorker and many other media during the heydays when people still read magazines. He was a contemporary of John Updike, John Cheever and the like, and after a successful career in the professional publishing grind, he settled into a sunset career as a writing teacher at an eastern prep school—presumably because he held out hopes that some students might still care about the art of writing and carry that into the future.
I had no idea what his word for me would be.
“Poise,” he said.
He went on to describe that poise is more than standing fast when the stuff hits the fan. Poise is also planning. Poise is being the rock that others can lean on. Poise is accepting defeat with grace and then coolly strategizing to come out on top the next time around.
I’ll admit that when I was 18, I was hoping for “genius” or “indestructible” or “indomitable” to be my “word.” “Sexy,” was obviously a longshot, even then, and it would have been weird coming from an English professor in his 70s anyway.
Fat chance. I didn’t deserve those other words then, and I certainly don’t deserve them now.
But “poise,” it turns out, was pretty damn good. Probably the best word that that ever got dropped on me, because I’ve felt an obligation to earn that word, every day, ever since. Even now, If I could earn any one word, it would still be “poise.”
You see… he knew I wanted to be a writer. And he knew a wannabe writer had to deal with rejection, develop thick skin, roll with the punches and learn from disappointments.
In my alter-life as an angler… well, I also quickly learned to develop thick skin, roll with the punches and learn from disappointments.
I learned that failure is not a sin.
As Teddy Roosevelt said, “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
Fishing, as trivial as it might seem, is the perfect medium for capturing the invaluable essence of poise.
I often see a fish feeding, and I make what I think might be the perfect cast. And still, I often fail to hook and land the fish. That’s just fishing. When everything lines up just right and works out perfectly, that’s a reward, not an expectation.
Having said that, when I see that fish and wind up to make the cast, I’m never afraid of failing. I’ve already failed too many times to even care about failing again.
Instead, I feel poise…. and hope… and confidence. What eventually happens, happens. And I’m fine with that, because I’ve learned to accept winning as a gift.
I gladly take those lessons of poise with me wherever I go, far beyond the currents of a stream. Poise is an invaluable asset, anywhere, in any situation. You might not realize instant gratification, and that’s the way it should be, especially in fishing.
It’s all about what happens next. And poise is the bridge between hope and success.