The Path In Front Of You

By the time you have your sec ond child you develop an affin ity for bread heels and burnt marshmallows. You don’t even really feel like you’re settling for them. By the time number three comes around those things genuinely taste better, and you prefer them. Then the little ones feel like Michelin star chefs as they pull the flaming confection out of the camp fire.

There’s a little grace built into our brains, I suppose. Which is important. Grace. Without it, much of what we do amounts to a zero sum situation where we come up short.

In that old book “To Kill a Mockingbird” Harper Lee wrote about courage. She wrote about Atticus knowing he was licked before he started but seeing it through no matter what. See the most important part of that is that he knew he was licked. The last year has licked a lot of people in rural America. There’s no sense in denying it.

Pretending it didn’t suck doesn’t make us any stronger. Bottling it up doesn’t make us any better. My first plea with you reading this is to talk about it. With your family. Neighbors. Friends. A stranger on the internet will do. If you’re having a hard time, a lot of us are here for you. A funny thing happens when you talk about how hard things can get. They don’t become less hard, but you become a little stronger. Perseverance is a big part of the human condition, but it’s particularly obvious in rural America. Things can always get worse, and unfortunately they probably will. There’s something about us, about you, however, that prefers tilting at windmills. That’s why we don’t work office jobs where someone else tells you what to do and you get a check every two weeks. We like riding comet tails. Coleridge called it poetic faith. That willing suspension of disbelief. In “Lord of the Rings” Gimli the dwarf contemplates the perils of the mission he’s about to undertake when he says, “Certainty of death. Small chance of success. What are we waiting for?” It’s the theme of every great story. Including yours.

The capacity for having faith that we’ll be equal and able to survive a difficulty might be the most graceful anomaly we’ll ever experience. It might be the feeling for which I’m most grateful. Continuing to progress as human beings, not in spite of but because of our challenges, is my definition of excellence.

You’ll find excellence in a lot of places if you look for it. In an Iowa high school janitor’s broom. A bus driver in Austin, Texas. An old timer walking between rows of carrots in Bakersfield. In you. I promise it’s there in you waiting to sharpen your senses and quicken your mind.

The thing about the path in front of you is that if you can see exactly where’s it’s going, it’s probably not yours. I don’t know exactly where the future of agriculture is. I do know that this is an adventure I’ll pick over and over again, along with so many of you. Through good times and bad, the life we choose is a hell of a party.