Cora had been working in her industry since she graduated almost two decades prior. She’d made a solid name for herself, accumulating plenty of accolades along with her ever-widening scope of responsibility. She still had a deep passion for the work she was doing, though she recognized that she wanted to do less of it.
Part of that desire came from the burnout she could feel growing inside of her – not yet all-consuming, but undeniably there. Part of it came from seeing how her three kids were suddenly needing her more, not less as she’d always imagined would be the case by this point. Part of it came from a realization that she actually really enjoyed being involved in programming in her local parks system, and was hungry to do more of it.
Aware of this disconnect between her desire and her reality but not sure how to resolve it, Cora had spent the last several years trying to tending to all the things she could. She’d found a college student to help with transporting kids. She’d adopted a meal planning system that worked some of the time, as long as the calendar stayed set (it rarely did). She’d done Fair Play coaching with her partner and their division of labor actually felt relatively equitable. She’d been taking supplements to see if they would help her fatigue and brain fog. She got up early to do weight training. She downloaded an app to practice mindfulness. She’d scheduled dinners with friends. She did values exercises to make sure she knew what was important to her. She read all the books. Watched all the Reels. She would work on her sleep hygiene, but she was too tired to try.
Cora knew that what she really wanted was to make a shift in her career. She wanted to reduce her scope and to spend less time working. She had also done enough personal reflection work already to work through some of the internal barriers that cropped up around this. She felt comfortable with what it would mean for her professional and personal identity, and she no longer felt guilt or embarrassment or anything negative at all about downshifting.
Cora would say that the biggest thing that kept her working at the scale and pace that she was her mortgage. She’d always been the primary earner in their family and their finances couldn’t hold without her current income. Their home was the biggest factor in that, and so Cora had stopped at some fantasizing about what a downshift could look like and instead focused on trying to treat all of the symptoms of her current situation. There were no shortage of options being marketed to her for exhaustion, anxiety, and home efficiency.
Cora was constantly fishing for minnows, but she was standing on a whale.
The phrase comes from a Polynesian proverb – standing on a whale, fishing for minnows – that was popularized in the west by the mythologist and writer, Joseph Campbell. Campbell described this as one of his favorite concepts, and he used it to point to the ways that we so often miss our deeper spiritual calling by instead focusing on the trivial and immediate. I love that interpretation, but I think it can have an even more down to earth relevance as well.
When I first heard it, I thought about all of the people – myself included – who have come to therapy fishing for minnows. We show up in states of overwhelm, anxiety, and even despair, and what we think we want are enough minnows to help us make it through. We’ve often already been fishing for them for a while. Most people I know who show up on a therapy couch have tried plenty of other things by the time they get there. They’ve often tried so many things that they now feel burnt out on trying to feel better, on top of everything else.
And maybe many of them have helped to get them to the next day, and the day after, but they know on some level that they are going to have to keep fishing if survival is the plan. But all the while, very often, they are standing on a whale.
It’s scary to realize that you are standing on a whale. Recognizing the whale beneath your feet means that you have to reckon with a whole-ass whale, not just a bunch of minnows. You no longer have size advantage or dominance, and the whale is far less predictable than those little minnows. Seeing the whale for what it is can sometimes take your breath away.
But also, you’re finally seeing the whale. And there’s usually a particular kind of relief in that. Because while your conscious mind was focused purely on the minnows, your body sensed something about the whale down there. Your mind and body aligning feels like a click, even if wholly inconvenient.
As a therapist, I see part of my job as being a whale-watcher. I can undoubtedly get caught in someone’s minnows for a while too, but I work to keep my eyes open for the whales. Standing over here on my own whale lets me have a better vantage point than someone trying to see theirs themselves.
Here’s the thing, though. We’re not always ready to tackle the whale. There are times when we first need to increase our strength, call in fellow fisher-people, or collect enough minnows to survive the potentially long battle with the whale. Recognizing the whale and addressing it don’t always have to happen simultaneously.
And sometimes, seeing the whale for what it is can shift things dramatically on its own.
When Cora recognized the whale in her situation was the financial handcuffs of her hefty house payment, she was able to start thinking more critically about what maintaining this home meant to her. That led her to realize a lot of stories that she was carrying about keeping her house, too. She had stories of what it would mean for her kids if she had to change school districts. She had stories of how her family would respond. She started to recognize some of the emotional attachments that she had there..
Even before she had decided whether she wanted to sell her house to ease the financial pressure she’d been feeling, naming it and teasing it apart helped her better understand what was actually keeping her feeling locked in to her current situation. Her house had become a whale, one that required feeding with her generating a higher income. Did she want to stay standing on it?
That was her choice, and there was truly no wrong answer. But she could see why exhausting herself with minnows hadn’t really been moving the needle. In some ways, she’d made the whole thing so complicated – happily aided by wellness influencers and TikTok – deciding she probably had deficiencies in twenty vital nutrients, an unsupportive spouse, or an undiagnosed mental illness. Maybe she had those things. She might. But meanwhile there was a big whale there that once she saw, she could begin to reckon with.
To be clear, sometimes the whale is an undiagnosed condition – like underlying depression, a longstanding trauma response, or ADHD. Sometimes, it is an unsupportive spouse and the deep dissatisfaction and lack of connection that has undergirded our experience of everything else, but has been too painful to really look at.
We all think we want to know the whale, but I caution you to what I said before. Seeing it can come with its own complications, which is why we’ve often developed so many defenses against getting a good look. This is where a compassionate and trusted whale-watcher is helpful. A skilled one will be able to help you look at it at the right pace and with the right approach. They might even help us offer some gratitude for the whale for staying put there for all this time – for being a place to stand while we did our other fishing.
In the end, it’s not about battling the whale or pretending it isn’t there. It’s about softening our gaze enough to finally see what’s been carrying us all along. When we stop chasing minnows and turn toward the whale, something quiet shifts—we begin to remember ourselves.
Questions for Reflection
- What are the minnows that you have been fishing lately? Which of them are helping you to nourish you and which may just be draining your energy?
- Is there a whale that you suspect you are standing on? What would it be like to just acknowledge it for today, rather than to need to engage with it?
- Who are your whale-watchers? Do you have people in your life who help you see what you may not?
