By BECKY NELSON
By Becky Nelson
“The hurried-er I go, the behind-er I get,” my mom has said on occasion.
Yes, indeed.
My dad’s frequent words were, “I look on the dark side so I’m never disappointed.”
Yes, indeed, on both counts.
And both sayings have been in my mind as of the last few weeks. I think the dark side rears its ugly head because of the hurried-er I go. Just like lots of you, my list of to-dos of late has been long, very long, and it seems I never get accomplished in a day what I hope. Victims of the ongoing novel coronavirus pandemic in a myriad of ways and current hopes to get back to “normal” have us all trying to accomplish a year-and-a-half’s worth of activities and duties in a minute and a half. I guess this is the nature of being human, or at least American, but I find myself getting more and more frustrated and pressured of late and a whole lot less patient.
I have seen my fellow humans’ loss of patience everywhere. Road rage, impatience in grocery store lines, disappointments in reservations for vacation hopes. We need to chill a bit. We need to sit back and breathe a bit. But it is hard, for all of us.
My week has been frustrating with full work load, a numbers juggle to make ends meet with rising supply and employee costs, a number of projects half finished, pressure to get things rearranged and ready for summer at the store and in the pick-your-own fields, and some personal pressures that have me on edge and more sensitive to disruptions, happenings and bumps in the road. I am quick to make mountains out of molehills.
If these days were a carnival ride, it would be a roller coaster for sure. One of those big, scary wooden ones that I would never voluntarily ride on. Normal farm stuff with picking, washing and displaying, opening of the store and farmers’ markets and check-ins with employees have me heading up the clicking, clacking rails. With hay down and drying with unexpected clouds and rain threatening the crop, fields waiting for planting later than we hoped, repairs gobbling up time we don’t have to spend, no time to take care of the mundane everyday life chores at the top of the track and the unknown and the “dark side” waiting for the plunge at the other side, the roller coaster can be scary. Sometimes I just want to get off the ride and lead a very quiet, very private, easy life. Another saying my mom used to use comes to mind, however. God never promised us a rose garden. Though if I would take the time to look, the roses are amazingly beautiful this year.
Lack of sleep, irregular meal times, pressures of things that need to be done now…they all niggle at me. It is hard to relax. I don’t take a break between chores. It shows in my attitude and my stress level. Things that I might have otherwise disregarded become “big” in my world. I need to “take a chill pill” and take every day as if it were a recovery from a disease. I think we all are suffering a bit of Post-Traumatic-Pandemic-Syndrome, and we have to collectively help each other get through the next few months of recovery. We need to be patient with each other. We need to greet each other with a smile. We need to chill out in the lines at the stores that are short of help. We need to watch our speed and our attitudes when driving. We need to be aware of the struggles and the needs of each other.
We, or I at least, need to get out of our funks and our thoughts and fears and start living meaningful and patient lives again. Watching the news with the collapse of a tower of apartments in Florida, I feel pretty selfish. Are my stresses and grumpiness and pressures really worth a worry? Nope. These folks are fighting for their very lives, grieving lives lost and worrying about loves ones trapped in the rubble and I am worrying about mundane things with limited “importance.” I think a lot of us are in this boat right now. We have been shut down in a bubble of our own thoughts and our own houses without concern for the struggles in the house next door. We need to wake up and start living, and loving, and caring again. The stresses and the uncertainties are molehills. Let’s not give them undue importance on our checklist and start looking for the important things in our lives again. Let’s look at the flowers and the turtles and the wildlife and our friends and our families and our neighbors and our countrymen and women again with some understanding and some caring and some courtesy and make our way out of our own thoughts and funks together. The road is not as bleak as it may appear. There is light at the end of the tunnel.
We never know when our time or a loved one’s time on earth will be cut short. All the what-ifs and the should-haves can torture us for a long time. We, well I, need to settle down, relax and enjoy a little bit. We need to let the small stuff and the molehills go and stop expecting so much of ourselves and others as we race toward a finish line that ends with the very end of our lives.
What good is life if we forget to enjoy it and share it with one another along the way?
Becky Nelson is co-owner of Beaver Pond Farm in Newport, New Hampshire. You may reach her at [email protected].
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