On day 43 of unemployment, Old Chen fishing in the park saved me

By day forty-three of unemployment I had turned myself into a piece of salted fish.

Days were resumes, waiting, and being read without a reply. Nights were my phone until three in the morning, other people's stories of success, and a panic that got worse the more I read. My savings dropped at a rate I could watch. The gap on my resume lengthened at a rate I could watch. In forty-three days the longest sentence I had spoken to another human being was "leave it at the door, thanks" on a delivery app.

That afternoon I had been through another so-called final interview — in truth I was there to make up the numbers — and I did not want to go home. I drifted into the park near my building. A row of men sat along the lake with rods. I found an empty patch of bank and sat down to stare at nothing.

Beside me was a man in his sixties: straw hat, folding stool, bucket. We talked in fits and starts. His name was Chen, he said, and he had been a fitter at a machine-tool plant before he retired. Halfway through the conversation he looked at the shadows under my eyes and asked, "Lost your job, son?"

I froze, then nodded. He did not comfort me. He reeled in, scooped a crucian carp the size of his palm out of the bucket, and threw it back.

"See that? Too small. No good. With fishing you can't rush, and you can't be greedy. Nothing big today, you drop the hook again tomorrow."

My spirits were at their highest, which is to say their lowest, and I blurted out, "Uncle, if I were your fish I'd be in the pot by now."

Old Chen looked at me. "You've got it backwards. A fish is a fish while it's in the water. You're still in the water. Why cook yourself first?"

We talked until sunset. He was laid off at forty-five, the year his daughter started high school. "I thought the sky had come down. I sat by a river for half a year. This river." He pointed at the bank under me. "Then I worked one thing out. The factory closing was heaven's business. The trade still in my hands was mine. I took one vernier caliper to a private company and stayed a fitter until I retired. Know what? I earned more than I had at the plant, and I had an easier mind."

Then he did the accounts for me. "These forty-three days, you've actually earned three kinds of money that other people don't have. First, you know your line of work is finished, so you change tracks early. Plenty of men burn until fifty on the old road. Second, you've got big blocks of time. Break them into ten resumes a day plus one new skill and you're busier than you were when you had a job. Third is the most valuable. In forty-three days you saw clearly that your savings won't last three months. That's waking up early from the pain."

That day I went home and the first thing I did was clean my room. The next morning my schedule read: resumes and video editing before noon, research into new fields in the afternoon, the park in the evening to watch Old Chen fish. He never said much when I turned up. He just tossed me a small stool. Some afternoons he caught nothing at all and packed up cheerful. "No bites today. Tomorrow they'll remember there's food here."

On day fifty-seven I got an offer in a new industry. The pay was a little lower and the direction was the one I wanted. I went to the park to say goodbye and found him packing his rod. He heard me out and said, "See. Told you. Tomorrow they remember there's food here."

I still go and sit in that park. Old Chen's technique is honestly average. He let it slip once that he is not fishing for fish. He is fishing for the composure of "none today, come back tomorrow."

The worst thing about a low season is not the missing income. It is treating your whole self as the failure. And hope is often a stranger on the next stool, handing you one plain sentence in your own language.