The Experience

The Experience

I remember years ago about the story of a farmer and his son who had a horse. A storm rolled through the farm one early morning just before sunrise with gale force winds blowing with the fury of a tornado, toppling old trees to the ground along with ravishing the farmer’s crops. A few hours later the sun reappeared and the farmer peeked out of his house surveying the damage. He could salvage some of his corn and those fallen oaks would make some good firewood for the upcoming winter. The chickens and cows sensing the worse was over slowly ambled outside in search of food reassuring the farmer that his family and livestock were safe.

            “Looks like we are in for a long day.” The farmer said to his son who was now beside him.

            “Mom has breakfast on the table.” His son replied.

While Jake’s mom was washing the dishes she stared out toward the fence.

            “Honey, you have a some boards down on the eastern side near the stream.” She said, “and I don’t see Daisy.”

            “What?” Replied the Farmer, “Daisy is missing?”

            “Why does everything always go wrong with us?” Emma sighed.

            “I don’t know what you mean.” Said the Farmer.

            The next day, the Farmer and his son combed the fenced-in field for hours only to find that Daisy had in-deed left the pasture through downed boards.

                        “Son, you must take some rope and find Daisy. I would go with you, but I have lots of work to do if we are to survive the upcoming winter.”

            Hands on the ropes with a backpack full of supplies, his son took off toward the stream in search of Daisy. The Farmer worked into the night repairing the fence, chopping firewood from the big fallen oaks and ever so often peering over the now repaired fence in hopes to see his son. The next morning the farmer walked into the kitchen where he could smell bacon cooking on the stove from one of his pigs he slaughtered only a few days ago.

            “Hon. Is Jake back, yet?”

She shook her head as she flipped an egg over noticing it starting to harden. “Shouldn’t you go looking for our son?”

            “And who is going to finish the chores today? I am behind as it is.” The Farmer replied and turned to his wife, “I will go in to town this morning and see if anyone has seen him.”

            The next morning, the farmer awoke a little earlier than normal. He couldn’t get his mind off of where his son might be. “If Jake isn’t home by tomorrow, I will organize a search party and we will find him.” He said to himself.

            The hot July day was closing in on the afternoon when the farmer heard some noise coming up the dirt road. It was the townspeople. “We’ve heard from Jake.” One of them shouted over the crowd. “He should be hear any minute.”

            The farmer waited patiently and talked to his neighbors about the storm and such when they saw a herd of wild Mustangs being led toward the Southern fence. As the horses closed in on the farm, the farmer recognized his son.

            “Jake! What are you doing?” He shouted.

            Jake opened the south passage gate and unleashed the ten horses into the pasture.

            “I found Daisy’s tracks and they led me to these Mustangs. It took me a few days to finally corral them, but now we can train and sell them. With the money we’ll make should more than pay for the damage to the farm.

            “How fortunate we are to have all of these horses to help us in our time of need.” Emma said to her husband.

            “Maybe, maybe not.” The Farmer replied as his wife gave him a curious look.

            The weeks flew by and finally Jake was breaking the last of the wild Mustangs when Jake saw Suzy walking up the path to greet him.  With Jakes head turned toward his sweetheart was when the horse bucked throwing Jake into the now repaired fence. Suzy ran toward the corral as fast as she could.

            “Are you okay?”

            “Ohhh.” Jake screamed. “I think I broke my leg.”

            “Oh no. I am so sorry that I distracted you.”

            “There is no fault to place here.” The Farmer said as he neared his son.

            As the doctor was plastering a homemade cast to Jakes leg, some of the townspeople dropped by to help him to the wagon.

            “That’s very unfortunate to break your leg. You will be a burden to your family.”

Jake looked at that man and remembered what his dad would say at this point.

            “Maybe, but then maybe not.”

            The man gave Jake a stern look, shook his head and walked off mumbling something about kids having it too easy these days.

            One late afternoon in November, the Farmer saw some men on horseback riding up the trail heading directly toward the Farmer’s house. Before they dismounted, the Farmer opened the door.

            “Can I be of service?”

            The lead rider was wearing a uniform with a broadsword by his side. He dismounted and walked up to the porch.

            “No, but your son can be?”

            “My son?”

            “Yes. Your King has order an attack on the land that lies to our west. It has been rumored that the people of Landover have gold and such that our King desires. We have come to conscript your son into His Majesty’s army.” As soon as the words left the soldiers mouth he saw Jake making his way toward the door with crutches in hand.

            “Hummph…” Came the Generals reply. “Do have any other sons?”

            “No.”

            “This one will do us no good.” The General said as he mounted his horse. The Farmer’s wife hugged her son.

            “That was fortunate.” She said.

            Jake and his father turned toward each other and smiled.

Why is it that we judge events in our lives as good and bad? And who decided which events are truly righteous and which ones are evil? Did we decide through rational thought? Acquiring as much information about both sides of the issue or event and then coming to a conclusion based on our best guess? Hardly, many times we are told what to believe and who is right and who is wrong. History is and always will be written by the victorious. Those who lose the fight will always be remembered as the evil ones.

What is gained by being right? What is lost by being wrong? Have you ever really thought about it? We spend so much time and effort to be right. I have had people lie about what they have done in order to prove themselves right. They will tell me one thing and when it turns out untrue, they reply, “I never said that.” Did they intentionally lie? I don’t think so. I think at times we parrot what we’ve been told through the media, or from friends. We are constantly looking for guidance outside ourselves. When they give us inaccurate information we don’t remember repeating the same. So when confronted by our mistakes, it doesn’t feel like we could have come up with that statement, because we didn’t. How many can freely admit making a mistake? The words “I’m sorry” tend to announce to the world that being sorry is some how equated to being weak. Like a man wearing a pink knit shirt, or even being bold enough to don a pink tie when going to work. These are recognized as signs of weakness, in other words the color pink is feminine. That’s ridiculous, pink is nothing more than a color. It has no statement of what it is then gray, white, black, blue, green or any other color for that matter.

95% of the scientist today have stated that Global Warming is real and needs to be addressed. 95%! That’s as close to 100% as we’ll ever get. The 5%? Who knows? However, one of the 5% stated that Global Warming is nothing but normal climate change and is not an issue at all. I have a friend on Facebook who brought that up and pooh poohed the whole Global Warming issue. He didn’t like the fact that Global Warming may impact his lifestyle, so he looks for reasons to dismiss the danger. That is what can get us into a lot of hot water so to speak. Humans have a strong tendency to reinforce their beliefs even in the face of compelling evidence to the contrary. With the advent of so much unchecked information flowing though out the world, it is easy to find someone of perceived importance to agree with your outlook. When the storm passed through the Farmer’s land, he didn’t sit around and decide whether it was a good thing or a bad thing. He just recognized the problem and made the necessary corrections. Fix the fence and send the son out to find Daisy, while the townspeople spent their time and energy complaining about the situation instead of coming up with ideas to address the problem. Are we that different than those folks long ago? When faced with adversity, do we instantly judge it to be good, bad, righteous or evil? Or do we allay our judgments and focus on what to do next. And who is to say that something is good or bad? Who has the insight and the wisdom to see the long range effects? We hear about the fiscal cliff and all the bantering in Washington about taxes. Everyone worries that we might go into another recession. If we do, we do. The smart man hopes for the best and prepares for the worse. I’ve always heard a saying that the difference between recession and depression is a recession is when your neighbor loses his job, a depression is when you lose yours.

Sure, it stings to lose ones income because we have so much riding on our jobs. We have the mortgage, the car payments, pay TV, Iphones, Ipads, Smartphones, Credit Card bills, Maybe losing your job is a good thing. Ever think about that? You should, even if you haven’t lost your job. Do you own your things or do they own you? Can you walk away and start over again? Sure you can, and who knows, you may discover talents and new way of making a living that you never thought possible. I used to be a pharmaceutical representative and the pay and benefits were good, but the pressure of selling was unbearable. I sacrificed living happy in the now, for fear of losing my things. No matter how well I did, it was never enough for the taskmaster. He constantly beat me with his verbal whip until one day I finally just quit and took a different path. It was scary at first and it was the first time I was willing to give it all up and start over again. It is when you release your death grip on your stuff is when you are free to live. Really live without all those worries.

Think of this, picture yourself on an asteroid and that big rock is heading directly toward the Sun. Now it’s going to take quite a few years before it burns up in the Sun, but it will. Now you have two options, the first is you can spend your time worrying about your impending doom, or you can enjoy the time you have before impact. Most folks would say, well I can’t do anything about what is going to happen to this big piece of dirt so I might as well enjoy the time allotted.

We are all on our own personal asteroid and our fate will end up just the same. Are you spending your time worrying? Or living? It’s your choice and it always has been. The world has a whole long list of things to worry about, all you have to do is choose your flavor.

Like the farmer, we need to take step back and do what we can and allow what happens happen. Maybe Global Warming is a good thing, maybe it can teach us to take better care of our planet going forward. Push us toward greener renewable energy solutions instead of pushing out coal and fossil fuel usage until exhausted. It may require some sacrifices and they may be a good thing also. We may have to start planting our own gardens, or walking more and driving less. Doctors say the best medicine is walking. In other words, it’s time to look for the silver lining in those clouds of doom and most of all to enjoy the experience. The experience that life has to offer. Out of all the millions, billions of people that share this planet, there is only one you. You are unique. You have special talents and ways about you that no one has or ever will have. Your body is the only one that looks like it does, no one else has one exactly like yours. You have choice to bringing happiness or sadness to the experience. What do you choose? Your personal rock is heading toward the Sun, do you worry about the cracks in the rock, the increasing heat or do spend your time knowing that there is an ending in some distance future and because of that, you understand that life is precious and each day that passes cannot be retrieved. So live your live by your standards, and more importantly experience all this world has to offer. It is yours for the taking.