Don’t Borrow Trouble and other advice to live by

Editor’s note: This is edited from the address Brian Yager gave at graduation on May 18.

How many of you have read a book by John Steinbeck?

When I was in high school, we read a book by Steinbeck every year from grade 9-11: “Of Mice and Men,” “Cannery Row,” “The Grapes of Wrath.”

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He was a poignant writer; he wore well the coat of human suffering and also human triumph. And he could be witty. The last piece he penned before his death was an account of his journey circumnavigating the United States, beginning and ending at his home in Maine. The travelogue was published under the title “Travels with Charley: In Search of America.” The title reflects the fact that Steinbeck was joined on his journey by his dog, Charley, a standard poodle and his good friend. As he notes in his writing, Steinbeck set out to determine the essence of America. While the book details his adventures and discoveries throughout his journey, one line in it has always captured my attention. After leaving his home in Maine and traversing through the Great Lakes region, Steinbeck finds himself in Montana, and he quickly falls in love. In describing the state to a friend, he writes: “Montana seems to me to be what a small boy would think Texas is like from hearing Texans.”

Having lived in Texas and Montana, I can attest to the veracity of his statement. Most Texans love Texas, and their fondness for their home state can lead to a great deal of embellishment. Montana, on the other hand, is everything a Texan might claim, and more.

However, in terms of his quest, Steinbeck found more of America in Texas – both the good and the bad –than anywhere else. And he spends a great deal of the narrative in “Travels with Charley” sharing wisdom he gleaned from the people and the adventures he met there. For my part, I have had the same experience. Woven into the tall tales shared by my friends who call the Lone Star State home, I have found much wisdom. There are two sayings that I associate with Texas that I would like to share today, one from a real person and one from a literary character.

– Rhonda Durham, executive director, Independent Schools Association of the Southwest

The first comes from Rhonda Durham, the former head of Trinity School in Midland, Texas, who went on to serve as executive director of the Independent Schools Association of the Southwest. As director, Rhonda coordinated all of the governance activities of a collection of over 100 independent schools across six states. There was one piece of advice that she shared on more than one occasion that has stuck with me. Sometimes, when discussing a situation in which it was clear that an individual staff member or parent was not going to be content with an outcome or a decision made at one of our member schools, Rhonda would advise, in her Texan drawl, “Remember, our job is to water the grass, not the rocks.”

This phrase has become a mantra I repeat whenever I feel as though I am directing too much of my energy – personal or professional – toward something that will bear no positive return. The second saying I picked up from a Texan comes from a character in a book by Zane Grey. In Grey’s novel “West of the Pecos,” the protagonist is a character named Rill Lambreth. When Rill’s father dies on the way to their new life as Texas ranchers, Rill is left to settle the homestead by herself. Its location? West of the Pecos – the river that traverses western Texas on its way to connect with the Rio Grande. Rill enlists the aid of the cowboy and gunslinger Pecos Smith. Pecos gets his name from the river basin where he has spent his entire life.

There are several occasions during which Pecos gives Rill advice about managing this new ranch on the range. Understandably, Rill is apprehensive about all kinds of things on the frontier: Will there be enough rain to keep the cows alive? Will there be too much? How can they protect their herd from cattle rustlers? Whenever Rill’s preoccupation with these concerns begins to bubble unproductively, Pecos resets his friend’s temperament with one simple line: “Don’t go borrowing trouble.”

Worrying about things that might happen is a natural thing to do. It is part of our survival instinct. Yet, we also seem to be able to worry about things that are unlikely to impact us and/or to misjudge the actual extent of any negative outcomes that might result from a given situation. We can also wear the troubles of others, even when we ourselves have no connection to them. Today, there are many ways in which many of us tend to borrow trouble. In fact, many industries are built to take advantage of this propensity. The insurance industry is an obvious example. It literally profits from fear. Don’t get me wrong, it is prudent to seek insurance in our lives and to prepare for the risks we face. However, as the abundance of advertisements for insurance products suggests, there is a lot of money to be made off of our fears. Many other industries use fear as powerful motivator. Media outlets attract the attention and allegiance of their viewers by focusing on the things they fear, and so too do some politicians. To a certain extent, all of our actions can be viewed as a response to some form of fear or other, with many behaviors reduced, ultimately, to a response to the fear of missing out, and this is an especially pernicious aspect of the impact of social media. But the wonderful thing about being human is that we can know ourselves and respond accordingly. The opposite of fear is hope, and we can choose to approach our decisions in life with a lens that sees positive opportunities in the future rather than all of the prospective pitfalls. While it might be simply a question of semantics and perspective, surely life is better if we seek the light, rather than avoid the dark.

Circling back to Steinbeck’s journey in search of America, one of the episodes he recounts is of his visit to New Orleans where he observes a group called the Cheerleaders. This band of older women stands outside a recently desegregated school and hurls insults at the children as they enter. It is an episode that deeply disturbs Steinbeck, and one that shakes his belief in America. He notes that the Cheerleaders are a group whose actions are solely based on the fear of the unknown – on the trouble they have borrowed. They believed that desegregation would negatively impact their life, and they acted on their fear. Conversely, in the many instances in which Steinbeck found good in the America he observed, it was often because he found people watering the grass and not the rocks.

At last week’s baccalaureate, Dyllan Han gave a wonderful speech in which he suggested that while clichés have a bad reputation among writers and scholars in general, they can often Dyllan’s thesis by finishing my remarks today with another cliché. Graduates, you have experienced many things in your lives, and the future holds many unknowns. While you cannot predict or control the world around you, you can control your reaction to it and the lens through which you observe it. Your future will be much brighter if you choose to water the grass and not the rocks, and if you heed, as much as possible, Pecos Smith’s admonition not to borrow trouble.

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