Of the essence

In my last post, I listed some of the projects that we are working on. You might have gotten an idea of the outrageous level of mess and confusion I've been living with these last few months. For me the baseline for living is a clean and orderly environment in which to work, so the mess and confusion is a major issue. Added to that are worries about the economy (national and personal) and about the ecology. This is the kind of thing that spins me out and makes me completely dysfunctional.

And yet...

I am profoundly content. And I think it has to do with keeping the chickens and goats.

I wouldn't say that chickens and goats inevitably confer contentment. But for me, having critters in my life is literally essential: it resonates with the essence of who I am. Back when I was working with Curt Rosengren, the Passion Catalyst, he said to me, "You are all about Life." (I was having trouble coming to terms with the fact that the place I worked, which is not at all about Life, was a really bad fit for me.)

There is, apparently, some inborn farmer in me. It skipped a generation and I never got to spend much time with any of my grandparents, so who knew?

I just recently learned from my mother that both of my grandmothers loved to work outside. I knew that my father's mother worked in the fields a lot, but I had not known that it was her preference. Turns out she had a team of horses and hired out to neighbors as well as working her own acreage, back in the Depression when she was a single mom. I never even got to meet her; she died while my dad was still in high school. We would have had so much fun together.

My mother's father was good with animals, plants, and the land itself. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, before anyone was talking about contour farming, he used what he called "lay of the land." He pruned trees with a pocket knife, gently pruning the branches while they were still the tiniest of twigs. That takes getting to know each tree and shrub as an individual, and visiting it often. He could work with animals that no one else could get near. He had a series of farms that he bought when they were worthless and built up to be valuable, productive land. He died, a very old man, when I was five. I was with him perhaps a week in all of my life. But I find that I look at land and plants and animals the same way that he did. How did this gift come down to me? I think that my mother acquired his outlook on life, and it has informed everything she does all of these years. And that in turn was passed on to me. It's about respect and responsibility toward each living thing around you, and joy in sharing the world with all these kinds of life. It is about letting them be who and what they are -- reveling in who and what they are -- even when you must take complete control over their lives.

I am content because I have in my life what is essential to me. What is essential to you?