Category: Farm Filosophy

Digging Into the Depths of Gratitude

Posted on by aidan.christine

It’s been a long time since I have posted here. Weird. I’ve been writing. I’ve been writing a lot. Usually just for me, sometimes to share with an audience. A couple of years ago I shared a talk on gratitude. It was popular, I gave this talk a dozen times. But then I retired it. I get bored with myself easily and I was way beyond bored with this. But rather than delete it forever, maybe parking it here would be worthwhile.

A couple of years ago I joined a group who shared our daily gratitude. At that difficult time it seemed like a good idea to be reminded of how much we had to be grateful for. These friends continue to share their thanks often for fundamental things – their health, family, friends, perhaps that they have a roof over their head and food on their table.

There is good science that supports a daily practice of gratitude; strong evidence that a practice of daily gratitude increases your happiness, improves your quality of sleep, even lowers blood pressure. Measurable results. So yes, be grateful I love my friends, but honestly, somedays their gratitude seems so small.

They’re grateful for coffee. Aren’t we all, but is that that the best we can do? The sunset. Gorgeous, yes be grateful for it. That is certainly part of the point of a gratitude practice, to remember some small bright light at the end of a dark day. But rather than reach for the obvious couldn’t we, sometimes, dig deeper? Isn’t that also the point? Especially when our days are not so dark Brene Brown has said “What separates privilege from entitlement is gratitude.” But I think that gratitude is deeper than simple appreciation. So let’ us’ dig in a little deeper to how our gratitude intersects and interconnects.

Health is always on someone’s list. So much of our overall life satisfaction relies on even the slightest improvement to our health. Absolutely, appreciate your health. And then what? In part, maybe being grateful for health is also being grateful for the decent insurance coverage that your job provides. Dig deeper and you might be grateful that your parents could adequately nourish you as a child so you didn’t develop life long maladies. Keep digging and find gratitude for who your parents’ parents were, what they looked like, where they came from that allowed them to pass on the ability to feed the kids. Keep digging. If you look like me odds are that you grew up where the air was a lot cleaner than the neighborhoods where our black and brown friends lived. Be grateful.

Many of us are grateful for family… people who love you even when they don’t like you… the continuity, connection of that love. Be grateful, and then what? Dig deeper, to see that perhaps your family wasn’t torn apart when one parent had to leave to find work. I wasn’t sent away for safety, were you? Generations of my family weren’t intentionally separated to stop the spread of language, culture, and history that binds us together. Be grateful.

We are grateful for the roof over our heads and the food in our bellies. But let us acknowledge that the roof covers air conditioned space and the food in my belly is way beyond sustenance, it’s usually delicious and comforting. There is nothing at all wrong with that. Don’t feel guilty about that. I am grateful for the comfort and excess I have and I am grateful for any you have because I like you and I want you to be happy. Be grateful. And then what? I dig a little deeper see that my success is a product of my education and I am thankful that I grew up in a household where the luxury of an education was a reality. My dad, didn’t finish high school, he didn’t even start it. He went to work. Eventually he joined the army, then got a job, went to college. So I grew up fairly comfortably. Be grateful for your parents but, don’t stop there, dig deeper.

I know that the GI bill which helped my dad was not given out fairly. He got a boost that men of color did not. My roof and the food in my pantry are a direct result of that. I am grateful. So when it comes down to it, some of my friends and I, and maybe some of you, are grateful for generations of advantages We are who we are. We have what we have. Please be grateful. But then what? To begin with, please be happy, it’s a benefit of gratitude. Get a better night’s sleep courtesy of your gratitude. Your blood pressure is lower because of your gratitude. And then what?

I find it interesting that two men who were ideological opposites came up with these very similar sentences: Leo Tolstoy wrote “I sit on a man’s back choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am sorry for him and wish to lighten his load by all means possible… except by getting off his back” Decades later, Dwight Eisenhower said “A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.”

Please know that guilt has no place in gratitude. You have what you have. Be grateful. You should not have less. Should you? I don’t know. There are a few areas in which I should have less. But that’s me. Personally. We all should embrace what we need to feel fulfilled, safe, happy, secure, valued. It isn’t one size fits all. But too often, in the way our world is organized, the fulfillment of some comes at the expense of others. Does it have to be that way? I hope we actively look for the line between gratitude and greed, need and want, us and them.

Too often we are led to believe that we need to be on top, better than. And here is where real gratitude pays off. Material gain gets you some happiness and well-being. To a point. We get used to things being rewarding & pleasurable – take the good for granted It takes more and more to get us there. Conscious gratitude helps balance that. True gratitude is rooted in humility. In a survey of olympic medalists, bronze medalists were happier than silver medalists. What? Yes, really The bronze winners were grateful because they almost didn’t get a medal. Silver medalists had a measure of disappointment for not getting gold. Standing at the cusp of the haves and have nots, the bronze medalist is much more aware of all the athletes in their interconnected web. They see just how lucky they are. Luck, privilege, mystery of the universe – we simply did not earn all that we have and our gratitude should acknowledge that.

When we combine our gratitude with humility we find that our health is a little dependent on our behavior and a lot on the luck in our stars. Doesn’t every kid deserve nutritious food? Doesn’t every kid deserve lead-free water out of the tap at home? Doesn’t every kid deserve to breathe clean air? But we know that poor kids live in food deserts. We know that lead pipes don’t get replaced in all neighborhoods, and that statistically people of color more likely to live near polluting industries. Those problems are huge and the solutions are complex. But we can at least dig in and acknowledge the inequity of the system that gives some of us so much to be grateful for.

We dive into the deep end of our gratitude for family and see that we were allowed to maintain connections through generations. No one erased our heritage. These issues run deep, but we can acknowledge their continuing effects. We can do that while being grateful. We take a harder look at gratitude for a home and see that it is easier for some us to get a mortgage because we look like the bankers. Institutional change is a long road. But we can recognize that the overarching economy is built on a foundation of inequity. We can do that while being grateful, in fact maybe we can do it more clearly because we are grateful. When we can see those places where our privilege actively bumps up against someone else’s oppression we can see an opportunity for change. But I think we have to look.

JFK said “As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.” How do we do that? I can’t answer that for you. I can’t fully answer it for myself. I do know that there is no shortage of health or food or shelter or education or happiness. There is enough. We don’t need to horde those things nor do we need to sacrifice the things that truly make us feel safe and happy. Some day soon I want us to be grateful that we helped the next generation, all of the next generation, feel gratitude for their health, their family, a roof over their head and food on their table. I want us to be grateful that we helped the next generation all of the next generation, have the luxury of being grateful for coffee & a sunset.

Can we get there? Yes. Emphatically unquestioningly yes. Do I know how? No. But I am certain it starts with being humbly grateful and digging a little deeper.

Be Careful When You Clean Your Office

Posted on by aidan.christine

Sub titled: What I learned in the song circle.

I’ve been cleaning my office. On the surface it already appears tidy. I have a small table that serves as a desk. No drawers, no where to hide anything, so that helps. I have some papers in folders. Behind a curtain there is one drawer, one basket and three shelves. How bad could it get? And so I never feel like I need to deal with it. I moved into this office four years ago. It has never been organized, de-cluttered, sorted. Never.

I dove into what should be an hour-long task. Have you done this? Why didn’t anyone warn me? Each folder, each pile was a geologic era to be studied. After a short while I decided that this egozoic era was not worth study. I piled paper into two stacks. One can be re-used, writing on the back, the other recycled. Done.

But before that moment of revelation, I found pages from various song writing circles. Our typed song lyrics which had been handed out to a circle of listeners. Fellow writers had critiqued our first, or second drafts and offered thoughtful comments. Often I had highlighted those comments which were the most useful and helpful in rewriting and crafting the songs. They fell into just a few categories.

Overwhelmingly the most frequent and most useful was a simple line through a word. Redundant, excessive, superfluous, extra. I’m a word hog. After years of seeing this same edit, I continue to hoard words in my first drafts, but I have learned to self edit by the second edition. The second most frequent was a mixing of tenses. Verbs morphed from past to present to future. Occasionally I forced a rhyme and slightly more frequently forced a rhythm, choosing a word simply because it fit the meter. Finally, from time to time, I was lazy with my word choice. It was interesting to see the evidence across a half-dozen year time line. I committed them to the scrap-paper heap and moved on. But they lingered in my mind, which refuses to be organized or de-cluttered.

Our habits are telling. I’m convinced that they spill over into many aspects of our being. Extra words. Why? To fill the space. No doubt that is the reason for me. A word on every beat, because otherwise there is silence. I’m a writer, an absence of words is an absence of me. But it is not. The work is a combination of the sounds and the silence. I know that. I know both have power, more together. But apparently I needed reminding. A lot of reminding. My recent work shows that I recognized this and have become capable of self-editing that vice. In songwriting. What about the other aspects of my life? Where else am I excessive, what am I hoarding? Where else do I fear being erased?

Which brings us to tenses. Past. Present. Future. Do I co-mingle those outside a song? Forget that the past is done and try to drag it into the present? Do I obsess about the future while the present slips by? A quick scan of a page shows me if I’ve done that lyrically. But I don’t have a behavioral critique circle. Oh. Yes. I definitely do. Perhaps they could write out polite suggestions that I could read later. It worked for songwriting.

Forcing rhyme and rhythm. Choosing an easy word. Those are both symptoms. They are some combination of laziness and conformity. I don’t like that description. I don’t want to be lazy or settled into a conforming to a routine. But clearly I do want those things sometimes. Often enough to form a pattern of criticism. Comfort zone is aptly named. Of course there is nothing wrong with seeking comfort in familiar things. Until it becomes defining and confining, an excuse for not taking a risk or making the effort. And there it is again, art imitating life.

Hopefully when I check in with myself in the next decade I will have learned to self-edit some of these bad habits. What part of me will be turned over and re-used and what will end up in the rubbish bin?

Hope Is Not Just That Thing With Feathers

Posted on by aidan.christine

If you are like me you hear the words “hope is” and immediately your brain fills in the rest:

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in your soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all

But hope isn’t that. Not always. It isn’t etheral. It isn’t some mysterious constant. It isn’t even optimistic.

Hope is trial and error
Sweat and deep concentration
A knowing that better things lie ahead
Despite the current frustration

I’m no Emily Dickinson. But my version is truer for me, although less beautiful. Hope doesn’t just come. We call it into being, create it, nurture it, work at it. And thank goodness hope isn’t just the thing with feathers because my wings have been clipped. We can’t travel, our shows have been cancelled months ahead. So I hope.

I hope that in this strange period of tumultous quiet we discover the things that really matter to us and what we can let go of. I hope that we learn we can do with less. I hope that our pace slows a bit so we can experience each moment. I hope that my beloved local shops and retaurants have survived, that the small bookstore still thrives, that good coffee and good cheese are still being made by hand. I hope we deeply miss our friends and are reminded how important they are. I hope we recognize that there are a lot of people out there who are friends we haven’t me yet and we value them as well. I hope, that on the other end of this, the habit of listening to music together in a room hasn’t been supplanted by some lesser substitute.

By hope, I mean that I have a knowing that these things will be true if I try, if I work hard enough to sweat and challenge my thinking. My energy will change the trajectory. Here’s what that looks like.

When we begin to leave the house again, I will support small business over larger ones even if it means less choices and more dollars. That is the right choice and the right choice isn’t always the easiest choice. I will make that a habit, and when the wider world opens up I won’t break that habit. When the small town I am in is your town, not mine, you will have to guide me so be ready to recommend coffee shops, bookstores, and more.

I will commit to seasonal eating where possible to sustain a local food supply and yes that means I don’t get everything I want when I want it. Of course I won’t suspend my joy, there will be indulgences, but they will be savored. And I am sure there will be new joyful indulgences discovered in this process. I’ll get by with less, won’t be wasteful, so that I have more to give and more to put away for a small emergency.

I will campaign for people, support issues more than ever. Because we can’t do this alone, we have to work together to make our changes more permanent. I will be paying attention to the details, the systematic steps that are taken by our communities and lawmakers. We have witnessed how vulnerable our policies make our people and we cannot willingly allow that to go on.

And when the wider world opens again, I will gasp in its splendor, every mile of it. We’ll hit the road and sing with more heartfelt emotion than we knew possible. We will relish telling our stories and hearing yours. But it can’t go back to business as what was once usual. My community of artists, writers, and musicians suffered. Hard. We need a better model. I am going to hope for that. And Hope is not just a thing with feathers.

Theoretical Asparagus

Posted on by aidan.christine

Four years ago when we were building our house I planted asparagus. The plumbing wasn’t in yet. The electric wasn’t in yet. But I convinced Aidan that the most important thing for us to do was to build two contained beds in which to plant asparagus.

I’d never planted asparagus before. The first year, asparagus tips emerge and the enthusiastic gardener must summon all of their strength to leave them be. No harvesting in year one. Strength must go ointo the root system. Year two, allows for 25% of the yield to be harvest, year three 50% and finally, eating at will. I stood on the muddy hill in front of the shell of a house and imagined myself eating asparagus straight out of the garden one day. Today I’m eating asparagus.

That first planting was a commitment to staying in this one place for at least four years. I’d never made that commitment before. I was commiting not only to a house, but to this small street. Which meant I had to decide to get to know my neighbors. This had always been an easy thing, but now it was a more difficult commitment. When I get home from six weeks on the road I don’t want to see anyone. Ever again. Usually by the time that feeling passes we are loading the car again. But now, we would arrive home, and check in, ask after, engage in social conversation. Four years in I can report that that phrase “by the time that feeling passes” is self-fulfilling mythology. The longer one waits to re-engage in community, the longer it takes for that feeling to pass. A couple days of self-care before diving back in is really much easier in the long run.

Planting asparagus also meant commiting to my town. It meant having a beer at the local brewery, eating at the local cafe, and buying a book from the local book shop. Those things are completely and totally enjoyable, but I had always let them happen. Or not. Often a couple of weeks would go by before I supported my community. I have great excuses for letting that happen. Town isn’t really nearby, its a fifteen minute drive. That’s real time and fossil fuel I save by staying home. And dollars, hard earned folk musician dollars, are saved by eating and drinking at home. But the asparagus had been planted, the commitment made. So off to town we went. By design.

We sought out people and places that we liked and cared about, we participated, good grief we even joined a civic group and we show up at meetings once in a while. We decided that there was tangible value to be a part of this community. And so we budgeted in the time and resources, with intent. Fours years in I can report that the value of my community outweighs the dollars, and in fact it really didn’t cost more dollars.

Maybe you aren’t a gardener. Maybe you don’t have space for asparagus. Maybe (gasp) you don’t even like asparagus. But you should plant some, theoretically. Stand on your muddy hillside and imagine what it could be in four years. Commit to it without immediate reward. Decide that it matters.