I love living on a farm. It is a simple life, not one of complex abstractions where logic becomes something other than that which it was intended.
Things are real, or at least as real as any of us ignorant human animals can ever comprehend. Seasons are real, new Life is real… and Death is real.
It all happens so methodically, with little need of intervention we humans can claim. It becomes easy to admit Nature really doesn’t need us hoity humans around to function. Nature can do just fine by itself, thank you very much!
Like the buttercups rising up through what was frozen, concrete soil just a few short weeks ago. Each new flower announces that winter is on the wane. Buttercups are the true sentinels of spring in these parts. Things happen in nature within its own, programmed mechanism; the moon and sun cycles, birth, growth and the reality that all living things eventually cease to be, sooner or later.
It’s been a rough few weeks here on the Farm. Death and destructions, so long held to bay, have been unleashed in a torrent of pain and sorrow. When you are alarmed by too many tornado siren blast in the dark of night and digging too many livestock graves, it begins to wear on even the most contained and assured psyche. We, here on the farm, are no strangers to hardships and loss-it’s part of the deal. We understand the perspective of it all in the grand scheme of things. We know enough that there are lessons to be learned from every moment, and we know all about when it’s time to say ‘goodbye’, to move on. Still, we also know pain and sorrow-Like in the song:
I’m not surprised when bad things end
Another takes its place again
But how hard would it be
I sometimes wonder
To give some balance to this game
When spring comes, there will be three fewer critters that might have been gracing our pasture; three less shadows that could have been, should have been, and yet were not to be part of the Equation. They all had names and distinct personalities, just like you and me. But their time had come and they are gone for the duration. They will not be part of the Frisbee days of spring festival here on the Farm. For some reason it was not to be.
It is all about the Equations of Reality. And Reality always adds up. Reality always finds us whether we wish to be found or not. Reality, at the end of the day, is all about tangible things that sometimes harshly reaches a conclusion we don’t really want. Sometimes we anoint ourselves as being clever and dwell in the abstract; where we find comfort chasing our tails in circular-notions about things we think we control, but really haven’t a clue. Like in the cowboy song:
He knows life’s for living
For living life free
Those things that don’t matter
Are for those who can’t see
Things are what they are. Just like we are what we are. Me, I’m a storyteller. If a story helps us laugh at ourselves, rekindles a warm sentiment, or illuminates some complex notion by a soft, simple light, I guess the words have served a purpose; even if it means sometimes storytelling about hard things like death and sorrow. It is all part of the same game.
There must be some reason for it all, but of course we are not smart enough to ever know.
Suffering’s not something He makes happen
Suffering’s something He makes go away
I then know, bad things come and go, but
Without His love
They would only come and stay
Rural folks have clarity about life and death. Death is not some big, high-concept thing from afar, it is tangible, it’s real, it is near and it is final-at least on this soil. For every animal, human or not, the final breath is forever, there’s nothing more to be done from that instant forward. But of course every breath that leads up to that finale, is fair game. Every breath has potential to produce something tangible.
Ah, the Equation of Life. The too many variables can be compressed within a very simple formula. It is all about Journey and the Destination. I will leave discussions about the Destination for others far more enlightened than I. As for the Journey part, that is for every person to decide, each breath at a time. I guess it is the Journey part of the game in which Nature allows us to participate, as best we can. You learn such things on the farm…like the reality of Death.
By the same notion you learn to understand that Life too is reality.
