Here’s the story of the salmon in English (Stefan Hammel, Handbook of Therapeutic Storytelling, p. 193f.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A salmon was travelling along the annual salmon run,\nfurther and further upstream. He had leapt up rapids and jumped over enormous\nboulders \u2013 and even used all of his power and skill to ascend waterfalls. \u201cNot\nlong now,\u201d said the salmon to himself at last. \u201cI remember being here before \u2013\nI passed it on my first evening on the journey down. I\u2019m much larger and\nstronger now, and I\u2019ll have reached my destination in just a few hours.\u201d The salmon\nredoubled his efforts, wanting to make faster progress. But as he did so, the\ncurrent also seemed to become stronger. The path down the river had seemed easy,\nbut the way back seemed pure torture. Sometimes he was too tired to swim, often\nhe lacked the concentration to jump properly, occasionally he had to swim\naround the rods and creels of the salmon fishers and once he even had to avoid\nthe paw of a hungry bear. Again and again he stopped to regather his strength,\nbut the river kept on flowing to the sea. By the evening the salmon noticed\nthat he had not made any progress \u2013 if anything, he had gone backwards. Sad and\ndisappointed, he found a protected spot between two boulders on the bank. He\nthought to himself, \u201cIt must be possible to reach my destination \u2013 others\nbefore me have managed it. But how?\u201d Then the clever fish had an idea. \u201cI\u2019m not\ngoing to try and get there as quickly as possible any more; I just want to make\nprogress. All I will ask of myself is to get a little bit closer to my goal\nevery evening than I was in the morning, and if I do that day after day I\u2019ll eventually\nreach my destination. As long as I\u2019ve made some progress by every evening, it\nwon\u2019t matter how short a distance I\u2019ve travelled \u2013 even if it\u2019s only half an\ninch.\u201d The salmon plucked up his courage and started again. Some days he barely\nmade any progress at all, but mostly he travelled much further than he expected\n\u2013 and if he didn\u2019t, he remembered his resolution and was content with what he\nhad managed. After a few weeks, he reached his destination; a lake near the\nsource of the river. He looked around, and found that only a few other salmon\nhad reached the lake before him \u2013 most were still trying to reach their destination\nin the shortest possible time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Here’s the story of the salmon in English (Stefan Hammel, Handbook of Therapeutic Storytelling, p. 193f.) A salmon was travelling along the annual salmon run, further and further upstream. He had leapt up rapids and jumped over enormous boulders \u2013 … Continue reading