Farm Raised Life Lessons

 I read an interesting post on Facebook the other day.

The post tells of a couple of fellas carrying on a conversation over a cup of coffee in one fella’s kitchen. They were busy chattin’ up the fishing, hunting, sports and whatnot tales friends like to do.

One of the fellas stands and says to his friend, “Keep talking I need to wash up some dishes.”

His friend looks at him a bit perplexed and says, “I’m glad you help your wife, I don’t, ’cause she never says thanks. Why, I washed the floor the other day and I got no thanks for my effort.”

Well, the post’s gist was about the dish-washing buddy, enumerating to his friend about how he doesn’t ‘HELP HIS WIFE’ … in any of the things the average male counter-part assumes is ‘woman’s duties’. And… he doesn’t look for a ‘Thank you’, from his wife, because, as he puts it, ‘he lives there too, so he’s doing his part’. It’s what’s expected and for that you don’t expect to be thanked.

The story doesn’t provide a ‘reply’ from the ‘non helping friend’, but we’re left to assume he was either stunned, aggravated, or became a member of UTBAF fraternity (ibid: Used To Be A Friend).

This kind of thinking is just foreign to me.

I grew up on a small farm in mid-central Indiana. My father, mother, older brother, younger sister, me, and 70+ year old grandfather were our core labor force. There would be the occasional visitor, neighbor or friend to ‘lend a hand’. But frankly, most of the time (like 99% of the time) their ‘help’ cost us more consternation that it was worth. However, all of life’s experiences – my parents taught us – were, ‘moments of training for something important’, so we were expected to ‘pay attention and learn’. As much as I didn’t like hearing that, their words not only came true, but paid off handsomely.

We didn’t have assigned jobs. Each day would begin with jobs needing to be accomplished. That was the goal. Those jobs were jobs that needed to be done. Not electives but necessities. For every one of those jobs, there would be from a half-dozen to a dozen other little things to get done, either as prep or a result of doing the jobs.

There just weren’t enough of us to distribute about to tackle a specific job. So, everyone was expected to work towards getting the work done; whatever that ‘work’ happened to be.

This wasn’t easy on Dad. I was too young and could not understand at the time the level of responsibility he held. But now …! Oh, MY! I see just how strong, tolerant, merciful, and effective my dad was in his role. He truly kept the ‘machine’ in order

This takes a team effort. No one person -an [ I ] – can do it all. Dad was the core; the ‘go to guy’ for guidance and assistance. But EVERYONE pulled the same effort in getting the jobs done.

My mother and father raised and taught us, long before I ever heard it in a sports analogy:

“There’s no “I” in TEAM.”     

                   ... Undetermined

I did as many dishes, sweeping of floors, planting of flowers, washing laundry, hoeing the garden, picking goods in the garden and orchard, as I did cleaning stalls, milking cows, rounding up stock, gathering eggs, feeding stock, preparing fields, harvesting, cutting wood … man! YOU name it, we did it! ,

By the time I was a sophomore in High School, I was competent in all sorts of, household chores, cooking, gardening, stock care, grain farming, machinery repair, welding, carpentry… even cider and maple syrup making. I didn’t need Driver’s ED, to learn how to drive. I’d been driving tractors, trucks and automobiles since I was 5 years old. The knowledge of the various projects and the confidence derived from accomplishment, served me well now for 68+ years.

So, yes. I learned when you ‘HELP someone’, it’s going to be someone OUTSIDE of your ‘Working Group’ (aka, Family). When you’re working inside the Family structure, it’s not ‘helping out’, it’s doing what you SHOULD BE DOING as a ‘member of the TEAM’.

This is but one of the reasons I’m so thankful for being blessed with growing up on a Farm, living in the country and having parents who knew what we truly needed as kids. 

This, and many more lessons have never failed me. I’ll continue working, to complete the job, so to not allow them to fail.

The Man Who Planted Trees

One of the most poignant stories to provide and answer to the oft asked question, “What can one person do?”, when faced with seemingly insurmountable odds agains them, is the story of Elzeard Bouffier.  The story is called, “The Man Who Planted Trees“.   

It is a story about the efforts of one man, who set out to restore a destroyed forest that he loved so well before the destruction of World War 1 France.  

The trials and difficulties. The shear joy of the challenge. The tenacity to keep going. The vision of what could be, overcoming the odds and despair of the moment. So many lessons we can all learn from.

Read this amazing story.  Enjoy it. Meditate on it.  Mull it around as you go through each day, encountering your own personal difficulties – and bearing those of others you know well or at a glancing blow.  

Then determine to reach down, deep within your own Kukakuka'la and do what you can to be as an Elzeard Bouffier in the lives of others.

Best success and may YOUR Oaks grow mighty and strong in the replenishment of your landscape.

Kukakuka'la: on Blogspot

"Let's talk story today."

In the Hawaiian language the word - kukakuka - is used between friends, who know each other well, to encourage remembrance between friends - with open vocalization - of the events of their past.

Saying and writing the paths we've trekked, the people we've connected, the events we have survived, keeps them all freshly alive in our memory. As we tell our friends our story, it is passed on for others to know.

The Hawaiian language uses suffix endings to attribute specifics to the root.  In the case of kukakuka, to add the " 'la ", adds a time frame of the present; ie, now, today.  Thus the translation of kukakuka'la, is to say, 'Let's talk story, today.'

This specific puts an air of immediacy - urgency, if you will - into the need to sit, talk, share, story.

In this way we feed the heritage of the world in which we exist.

Kukakuka'la.

Refracted Life

A Journal of Change: Refracted Life

Just as a PRISM refracts light -cleanly separating the previously ‘white-light’ into the magnificent – and clearly obvious- variety of colors we know as the SPECTRUM.

LIFE is also refracted – separated into a ‘spectrum-of-sorts’. This spectrum – that constantly runs together due to the hectic pace of today’s life – is constructed of the TIMES, PLACES and PEOPLE that pass through our life.

The PRISM engaged in the separating … is called CHANGE.

Until light passes through a prism, we don’t really know the variety and wonder of the various parts that make up light. In the same way, we live most of our life with little true knowledge of the variety that makes up our life; the What we can be moment. We live life on a day-to-day basis, mostly in a blur. Most of the time we’re glad to just get through it at all. Little time is made available for closely examining its various parts.

Now-and-then, we get refracted.

As a result, the refractions [separations of living reality from our hectic manifestation of prejudiced perception] begin to reveal the previously hidden elements of life and enable us opportunity for a glimpse into how our refracted life, reflects upon others.

It is Change – in our lives – that acts as our agent of vision. It is Change that brings clarity. It provides us a narrow glimpse of the variety of life; what it is; and the power the reflections produced have in the lives of other people.

It is the refraction of life that shows us the rainbow of possibilities.