Salmon Swimming Upstream Quotes

Salmon. Salmon, salmon, salmon, salmon. I eat so much salmon at these weddings, twice a year I get this urge to swim upstream.

Great Brown Bear is walking with us, Salmon swimming upstream with us, as we stroll a city street.

I network like a salmon in a bear costume. Why swim upstream when the honeybee has all the flowers? Is anything more romantic than roses on a grave?

But as I try and understand how life works--and why some people cope better than others with adversity--I come back to something to do with saying yes to life, which is love of life, however inadequate, and love for the self, however found. Not in the me-first way that is the opposite of life and love, but with a salmon-like determination to swim upstream, however choppy upstream is, because this is your stream...

a salmon swimming upstream, thrashing against a strong current in hopes of returning to—against all odds—the creek in which he was born.

While I was swimming in the pool the other day, I was thinking about all kinds of things. About you, about Helsinki. I’m not sure how to put it, maybe like swimming upstream, back to my gut feelings.” “While you were swimming?” “I can think well when I’m swimming.” Sara paused for a time, as if impressed. “Like a salmon.” “I don’t know much about salmon.” “Salmon travel a long way. Driven by something,” Sara said. “Did you ever see Star Wars?” “When I was a kid.” “May the force be with you,” she said. “So you don’t lose out to the salmon.

You're like a salmon swimming upstream," Lev offers. “It's inside you to do it. And it's inside me to help you get there.” “Salmon.” Cy looks thoughtful. “I once saw this poster about a salmon. It was jumping up this waterfall, see? But there was a bear at the top, and the fish, it was jumping right into the bear's mouth. The caption beneath— it was supposed to be funny—said, The journey of a thousand miles sometimes ends very, very badly.

Life is desire which essentially aims at expressing itself and consequently runs on entropic energy: it reaches its aim and then dissolves, like salmon swimming upstream to procreate and then die. The wish to die can consequently be seen as the counterpart and as another expression of the desire to live intensely. The corollary is more cheerful: not only is there no dialectical tension between Eros and Thanatos, but these two entities are really just one life-force that aims to reach its own fulfilment. Posthuman vital materialism displaces the boundaries between living and dying.

Could you imagine what a salmon would say if you asked it about its life? We think our lives are miserable? If only a salmon could speak. This fish spends half of its life swimming upstream, only to reach a body of water where either a bear catches it or it lays eggs only to die right afterward. What are we complaining about then? A salmon does what a salmon does. It doesn’t complain.

Over the years, I've moved through alternating cycles of personal neglect and nourishment. Sometimes it's just easier to give in and allow my life to become utterly consumed by the menial and trivial than to justify or assert my individual needs. Then, disgusted with my malaise, I rise up, spurred to action by a resurgence of energy, determined to find new ways of incorporating creative expression into my life without upsetting the domestic applecart. Like a salmon's impulse to swim upstream, the urge to improve my mind and keep my brain stimulated with fresh experiences and challenges seems innate, almost primal. Struggling for my inner life, I know I must keep oxygen flowing through my intellectual gills or I will die. Pushing against stagnation and opposing currents, I swim for mental survival, obsessed with reaching some instinctual goal and preserving my sanity.

Is that how it goes with writing? That as long as you are writing, no time is ever completely in the past? Is this the fate that befalls all writers--to flow backward, in present tense, into a time of pain, like a salmon migrating upstream, swimming against the current back to where it started, struggling through waterfalls, carrying a deep wound inside its belly, risking its own life. It returns, taking the same route back, tracking its own trail, travelling that singular path.

At the time, about to graduate from college, I was operating mainly on impulse, like a salmon swimming blindly upstream toward the site of his own conception. In class and seminars I would dress up these impulses in the slogans and theories that I'd discovered in books., thinking - falsely - that the slogans meant something, that they somehow made what I felt more amenable to proof. But at night, lying in bed, I would let the slogans drift away, to be replaced with a series of images, romantic images, of a past I'd never known. ... Such images became a form of prayer for me, bolstering my spirits, channeling my emotions in a way that words never could. They told me (although even this much understanding may have come later, is also a construct, containing its own falsehoods) that I wasn't alone in my particular struggles, and that communities had never been a given in this country, at least not for blacks. Communities had to be created, fought for, tended like gardens. They expanded or contracted with the dreams of men... Through organising, through shared sacrifice, membership had been earned. And because membership was earned... I believed that it might, over time, admit the uniqueness of my life. That was my idea of organising. It was a promise of redemption.

The salmon is a symbol of prosperity and determination to the Coast Salish tribes, the band of tribes in the Pacific Northwest of which the Jamestown S'Klallam Tribe is a part. She defies nature, swimming upstream to provide for the people of the land. Yet she must sacrifice herself to give that abundance to others. Her determination comes at a deep personal cost.

I crave that resistance, whether it comes from the city, my landlord, my staff, or my own shortcomings. It's not just helpful, it's necessary. You think a salmon really wants to swim upstream and die? They have no choice. That's how I feel, too.

The Cycle's Whisper by Stewart Stafford A crisp mountain breeze, Whispers on verdant meadows, In the starlings' murmuration, Bodies flutter as the wind blows. River salmon leap upstream, To the places of their siring, All the tests of life in the flesh, With thrashing bodies expiring. Starving bears lie in wait to Shorten the fading quest, Or a moribund swim home, To a watery boneyard's rest. © Stewart Stafford, 2023. All rights reserved.

Some flows, like sunlight or wind, cannot be affected by human action. No matter how many solar panels I put on my roof to absorb sunlight, they will have no effect on what the sun does tomorrow. But other flows—“critical-zone resources,” in the jargon—can be exploited to exhaustion. Consider an archetypical critical-zone flow: the run of salmon swimming upstream to spawn. Drop a net across the watercourse and the fish will swim right into it. As long as the number of fish taken from the river every year doesn’t exceed the number of survivors from that year’s crop of newborns, fishing can continue indefinitely—the supply won’t go down, no matter how many years people put in nets. But leave the net in too long one year and it will take every single salmon and there will be no more fishing after that. Catching the last fish is just as easy as catching the first—laying the net across the stream doesn’t get more costly as the supply diminishes. With critical-zone flows, things typically go fine until they suddenly don’t.

The key to realizing a dream is to focus not on success but on service. Ask yourself, what are the gifts and talents you can share to raise the collective consciousness of all that you encounter? Making that shift from self to service will bring an immeasurable amount of fulfillment to your job, your relationships, and the vision you have of your own best life. Gary Zukav brilliantly describes this as the moment you discover your authentic power: “When your personality comes fully to serve the energy of its soul.” Fulfilling your purpose, with meaning, is what gives you that powerful spark of energy unique to only you. The result is an electrifying current of clarity rising from the deepest part of yourself. By tapping into that source, you will no longer feel like the salmon swimming upstream. Instead, people will finally see the highest, truest version of you and stand in awe, wondering how you achieved your dreams. As you read this chapter, my hope is that you will find the courage to tune out the negative voices telling you all the reasons to give up. Make the choice to turn up the volume to your unique calling, the glory that is your own life. —Oprah

He’s a salmon swimming upstream. He’s Sunday morning swooping in like a hero when you woke up thinking it was Monday.