Grandpa’s Wisdom-Finding Balance

Grandpa’s Wisdom

By Craig Waddell

Another second grader and I sat on the door stoop outside the small county school we attended, amongst discarded coats and books.  Our classmates, both 2^nd and 3^rd graders, ran, swung, climbed, and turned flips on the playground in front of us.  The young boy and I talked and worked on our homework until a 3^rd grade boy came by an asked what we were doing.  When I told him, he responded, “Don’t do that here, the others will think you are weird.  Play and have fun while you can, and do your homework at home.”  So we closed our books and joined the rest of the class.  The irony?  I was having fun.  I have always enjoyed school and learning.  Given the right circumstances, I could easily have become an education junkie.

Home was a 100 acre dairy farm with barns, ponds, woods, meadows, basketball goals, homemade baseball/football fields, and a road that led to the homes of countless other boys.  In that environment, fun for a group of energetic boys waited just outside the door; fishing poles were always hooked and ready, bats could be used to hit a ball or battle bees which had purposely been angered, bales of hay could be turned into a horse or a hideout complete with secret tunnel entrances, and the woods held numerous mysteries, both imagined and real which needed solving.  As we grew older, the responsibilities and work which came with age also lay outside the house; feeding calves, mowing yards, hoeing the garden, tending tobacco were the boys’ jobs. Thus the outlook evolved that to truly be productive, a male must actively be engaged in some type of outdoor physical labor or sporting activity.

Through the years, in my mind, the desire to learn by quietly reading and studying in a school or office setting has waged battled with the view that a man must be active outdoors as long as the sun is shining.  The perception that very little truly productive work for an adult male can be done under a roof has produced guilt each time the desire to grow academically has drawn me into an educational setting.  Even today, as long as the sun is shining, that inescapable feeling of unproductiveness pours over me each time I sit down to write or read; in my mind, I’m wasting my time because there must be something more urgent and necessary to be done somewhere beyond the enclosing walls.

Age has a way of mellowing a man and changing his outlook on life.  His movements become slower, he becomes more conserving of his energy, his awkwardness becomes more apparent, and his age-related meds make 95 degrees, sunny days seem quite a bit hotter than they once did.  Eventually, activities done indoors while the sun is shining outside don’t seem as unproductive as they once did.  Does the guilt still prick the conscience?  Sure.  But as I reflect upon those misconceptions which I allowed to rule my life for so long, I can’t help but wonder if I haven’t missed out on fulfilling a part of my psyche that longed for sustenance.  Please don’t get me wrong, I am very thankful for the lessons and “horse sense” that playing and working on a farm taught me, and I wouldn’t trade the long days spent playing and working along side my family and friends for anything, but sometimes, I wish I had developed balance; the ability to understand that physical activity or inactivity in a specific environment does not serve as an accurate measuring stick of productivity.  I wish I had learned earlier in life to not worry so much about what others judged as being worthwhile, but to have developed my own sense of balance when it came to “book learning” and “learning by doing.”  Both are important, and both make each of us what we are, but some of us enjoy one above the other.  I wish I had figured out that it is alright to move the fulcrum a little off center so that one can engage in that side of life which he enjoys the most without feeling like he is failing to achieve his potential.

Balance is important in every aspect of life whether it is work, play, parenting, being a grandparent, and even in religion.  Finding balance early on will help one enjoy each day as it was intended to be, without the shackles of drama, guilt, and worry inherent with one-sidedness.  Finding it early in life can also keep one from having regrets in his latter years as he looks back over time and reflects upon the “what ifs” which plague us all.

Thank you, Craig for sharing Grandpa’s Wisdom.