One of the items that was damaged in the move was our toaster. If we want to toast anything, we have to hold the toaster handle down until the item is the right degree of toasted. It’s not convenient, but it works.

One Saturday, a little while ago, I told Jenya we could go get donuts from Cal’s, we could try Black Rock Coffee Bar, or we could get a toaster. We opted for Black Rock Coffee Bar and spent the last of our credit reserves. The coffee was good, but the total for drinks, breakfast sandwiches, and tip was close to $30. A toaster would’ve been $35 at Bi-Mart.

When we got home, Jenya said, “Rather than buying a fishing pole, we bought fish. Well, we don’t have any frozen waffles anyway.”

Wisdom of Our Ancestors

That got me to thinking about the wisdom of our ancestors, and I’m beginning to believe they were deliberately dense and obtuse or they preferred pithy sayings over the truth. In this case, “Give a man a fish and eats for a day; teach a man to fish, and he eats for a lifetime” is demonstrably false.

First, you need to understand when the saying is generally employed. There’s some theoretical discussion about what to do with the hungry, as if they were a group made up of the same-type of individuals, and someone will say the best way to deal with them is to give them the means to feed themselves, which sounds great because “teach a man to fish and he eats for e lifetime.” Unfortunately, what sounds good and what works in reality are two different things.

It isn’t enough to learn to fish, the person must also learn to clean and prepare the fish. When people are hungry, they don’t learn as well. That’s why school food programs exist. Depending on the amount of time it takes for someone to learn how to fish before they actually catch a fish, they could starve to death.

Catching a fish requires resources. You must have a rod, reel, fishing line, hook, bait, bobbers, a fishing license, and a place to fish, often in the form of a boat, or waders to get into a river. These things aren’t free. Even if you reduce it to the bare minimum, you’ll still need a hook, line, and sinker (which inspired another pithy saying about gullibility). You can dig your own bait, find used dental floss left by some scofflaw camper, but you still need a hook.

There are other ways to catch fish, but they all involve getting wet: weave a Native American fish trap, tickle a fish into biting your hand, or just being fast enough to grab the fish and throw it on shore. These will still require proper clothing.

However, education isn’t enough. Even the most experienced fishers come up empty on their fishing trips. A man might eat for a lifetime after learning to fish, but he has to be in the right area – a place where there are fish all year round.  And he won’t eat reliably every day.

Compassion of Today

If you want people to not be hungry you have to do both: feed them when they are hungry and teach them the skills they need to feed themselves. Unfortunately, those skills are no longer the skills of our ancestors. Some people have had the skills to feed themselves, but circumstances have conspired against them. They were laid off, so their company could be more profitable. They had medical bills that bankrupted them. They went through a rough patch and were never able to recover. The list for hunger is infinite, but the cure is easy. After all, there’s a story about loaves and fishes that many people believe, and for those that do, that story should serve as the example of what to do with the hungry.