A farmer's perspective: find the right balance between physical, mental activities
Intensity is related to youth. The young are enthusiastic to the point of extravagance.
I patiently listen to a young farmer talk about what makes him tick with passion and unaware he’s been going at it for a long time. I recognize in him a younger version of myself. That’s why I’m patient and just nod and smile, with only the occasional “right” or “yeah?” to help him along his monologue.
Besides, talking is hard work, especially over the noise of trucks hauling just-harvested pine to the sawmill, and we just met by a busy road.
This eagerness is a force of nature. Forces of nature can be beneficial or damaging. I don’t know how this young man runs his farm. If my own past is any guide, he tackles three Herculean projects … before breakfast. He gets a lot done, but half of it will have to be done again: Enthusiasm makes mistakes.
At least his motivation is right. To grow and raise good food is one of the highest goals any person could have in life. Yes, he’ll plant too early or too late, cut down a forest only to realize it would have been better to leave it standing and use it only a bit at a time. But he’ll learn from those mistakes.
Other young men’s misguided enthusiasms, such as drugs, promiscuity, easy money, reckless driving and other dangerous obsessions, have sent them to an early grave and left heartbroken families and traumatized victims in their trail. I’ve known a few.
So I listen to the young farmer, dead sure he’s right in his methods and expectations. Florida is big enough for us both. In time, he’ll realize most of us tweak our perceptions and ways of doing things more than once in life, as we observe, learn and age. “Work smart, not hard” becomes self-evident.
Who knows, at some point he may discover the philosophy of Thomas Merton, who thought that intensity and happiness aren’t compatible. Instead, he valued balance, order, rhythm and harmony. Of course he would: He lived most of his life as a monk in a Kentucky monastery with a working farm attached. Pulling weeds a few hours every day does wonders to center one’s thoughts.
The young farmer of 25 is not ready yet to listen to this old farmer of 50 talk about a holy farmer who died before either one of us were born. That’s all right. If he were, I’d share my take on Merton’s words with him.
That intensity is a form of ecstasy. That ecstasy is only possible when we put the rational mind aside and focus on body, rhythm and instinct. It’s not that intensity cannot be a part of happiness; it can, but only as part of a balance.
I’d tell him something like this: “It’s not every day one can make an entry in the farm’s diary recording temperature and rainfall, seed varieties, pest pressures and solutions employed, livestock behavior and so on. You cannot analyze a bank statement or write a newspaper article every day. You need to have items in the to-do list that require you to sweat, hack, till and, above all, shut down your mind. Strenuous, repetitive action as part of your routine is as important as thoughtful studying and planning if you want contentment. Sweat and thought: too much of either spell frustration and burnout.”
We are entering late summer here in North Florida, late summer of a troubled year; every year has felt pregnant with menace for a long time now. I banished television from my life ages ago, but cannot escape the zeitgeist, the force that shapes our epoch. So I need relief valves for stress.
In that light, I welcome hard physical labor. Not hard to find, for a farmer! Fields need tilled and manured for a fall crop, wood chopped, compost turned. I need time doing that, just like I need time designing a new irrigation blueprint or attending a civic meeting.
I talked about farmers here, but what you do is not important for the point I want to make. If your life is mostly mental activity — a lawyer or a professor — find things to do with your body, and avoid thinking for a while. If you mostly work with your hands (chef? masseuse? plumber?), give your brain something to do: learn an instrument or a language, read, play chess.
Life is neither frenzy nor stillness, not all muscle and not all idea. It is something in between: the right balance.
Santiago De Choch is an organic farmer in Suwannee County. He can be reached at seedandpen@gmail.com.
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This article originally appeared on The Gainesville Sun: Santiago De Choch: A farmer's perspective on 'the right balance'
