Clap Yea

The Meaning of Meaning June 8, 2011

For a few moments I completely lost my reason for hope.  One could say I was on the verge of losing my reason for being all together.  It began simple enough as a change in job origination.  A blip on the screen of economic recovery, something not even worth mentioning except that it dropped me in the bucket of despair like day old goulash plopping into the dog’s dish.  In one meeting I went from overwhelmed with job responsibilities to drifting in a sea seeking a spot of opportunity to land.

I was out of work.

For the past eighteen months I had toiled in several new ventures and now, because of an unrelated challenge to my partner’s other business, he could no longer afford the resource to build something new.  Which translated to, he could no longer afford me!

For the past six months I have been searching, calling, connecting, networking, pleading, praying and hoping for the next turn in my career.  I keep wanting to drop off the cliff into self pity and wallow in a glorious empty waffling, but I don’t have the luxury nor the conviction.

I am too much the product of my genetics to lose this fight.  In this economy, every thing points to my demise; my age, my skill set, my ethnicity.  Everything except my heart, my hope, and my talent.

I am just simple enough to believe that my life matters, even though I am hard pressed to find a worldly validation that I have anything at all to offer at this moment.  (Promises of work, opportunity, and income just around the corner not withstanding. )  But in my soul a spark remains reflecting deeds undone, stories not yet told, upliftment yet to be uplifted.  Undergirding and overarching all that I am or can ever be is a connection with myself that first formed during long moments of solitude.

I am an Idaho farm boy.

I grew up in a small rural community, Marsing, Idaho, where the water was clear, the nights cool, life simple, work plentiful, people were good and life made sense.  It was a time that is not now.  During long hours of work on tractors, in fields, and caring for gardens or animals, I had the sheer joy of thought.  My imagination had no limitation.  My energy was unfettered.  I dreamed of hero, heroine, and clowns in a constant cavalcade of humor, conquest, and vitality.  In those days I felt a constant connection with the good.  I miss that.

I miss dancing on the corrugates.  On our farm, we irrigated with gravity and water.  Each field was surrounded by a ditch.  We brought moisture to the crops by turning water into the ditches before pushing that water across the field through small furrows.   I created the furrows between waterings by dragging a system of shovels behind the tractor.  When I needed to cross a field by foot, I ran.  The ground between the furrows was even.  I placed my feet on the solid and leaped over the uneven ground.  I danced. I felt the burn in my lungs, the strain on my legs, the sun and wind on my back and head.  I felt gloriously alive.

Today, I must endure a constant parade of fools before me.  Technology places the antics of the rich, the wicked and the weak in front of my eyes so often that I long to see only green of crop and dust of earth.

While walking through the check out stand yesterday, while pausing to wait my turn, my eyes fell upon the tabloids and the mags.  As the headlines and lurid photos jumped out at me, my impression of the two rows before me was simply, “don’t care, don’t care, slut, slut, slut.”

As I push through this current challenge of directional change, and I will push through it, because I learned how to create a new opportunity years ago.  I recognize need as easily as a farmer sees drought.  There is a void and I will fill it.  There is a need for connection because the things that matter most are being smothered by the things that matter not at all.  Meaningful relationships, vibrant family, goodness to each other, and charity for everyone are mocked by those who do not know them and will not practice them, but we need the heavenly goods as vitally as my Idaho crop needed water.

In a farming community the only constant is the work.  The weather changes, crops rotate, equipment capacities evolve, but the work is always there.  It is the source of our meaning.  To be a good worker our  highest compliment.  Perhaps we all need to farm again.  Imagine a world where grow and nurture replaced derision and decadence.  I wonder what could happen?  I think  it’s time to get to work.