I love how the earth gets ready for winter; I love the change of seasons. This morning as I was out walking the dog I noticed the distinct hardening of the soil under my feet as the earth itself prepares to hold the snow that is coming over the next several months. I looked around the yard noting that I am going to be raking leaves today probably for the last time this season because last night a significant wind storm whipped across the landscape effectively blowing all the remaining leaves out of the trees in my yard and even blasting a significant number of leaves out of the prodigious oak trees in my neighbor’s yard across the street.
I discovered something while I was raking leaves this morning: there are a great many lessons one can learn from raking leaves in a swirling wind. For one thing, it means that you have to pay attention to the prevailing circumstances so you are aware when the wind has shifted and is now blowing your leaves in a different direction. You have to do an on-the-spot assessment of the situation and potentially change your objective. Is the objective get the yard cleaned and free of all leaves or is it to get some of the leaves in a pile for picking up? The issue of objective is very important here, because as I raked the leaves in this swirling wind sometimes they stayed where I put them and other times they blew right back across the very area I had just raked. So the question became: was it more important to get some of the leaves up and allow some of them to blow back over previously covered ground, or was the objective to have a pristine, leaf-free lawn?
It is in part about priorities beginning with first developing a strategy for how to rake the leaves in the swirling wind. I was also about knowing went to surrender control. I had virtually no control whatsoever over which direction the wind decided to blow at any given moment; the only thing I could do was determine which way the wind was blowing in the moment and try to rake the leaves with the wind allowing it push them along. All the while I was keeping in mind my initial objective of getting as many leaves into a pile as possible. And then in the midst of the work, there’s a little moment when you face a decision point: when does the strategic objective no longer look possible, and one is forced consider the possibility of retreat with the opportunity to live to rake another day rather than risk the possibility of defeat and failure? I stood exhausted and sweating inside of my multiple layers of clothing. The exertion, fighting the wind and the cold (it was about 25 degrees), and the lack of any breakfast or other sustenance to keep me strong all began to take a toll on me. In the end, however, I determined that I could indeed make it and by sheer force of will managed to finish the last patch of yard.
So here are the lessons while raking: (1) get very clear about your objective–what is it you are actually trying to accomplish (e.g. getting leaves in a pile or having a relatively leaf-free yard); (2) establish your priorities but be prepared to re-prioritize them as circumstances change (e.g. the wind shifts so you adjust the direction of your raking to take advantage of the shift); (3) Recognize that you have very little to no control over prevailing circumstances, so you must learn to work with what is given to you; and (4) sometimes it is important to explore the idea that perhaps your efforts are increasingly futile and that continued action was exerting more effort than the payoff was yielding. In other words, sometimes you have to know when to keep at it and when to punt.
I am grateful to have made the effort to rake my entire yard this morning. While it is a bit of a chore on the best of days, it was even more challenging fighting against the wind and cold to complete the project. So as I sit here, I am satisfied with what I was able to accomplish today. I am exhausted, but it is that sweet exhaustion that comes from good, hard work. I’ll look forward to a good night’s rest heading into the week ahead. I may wake up in the morning, look outside and see my entire lawn peppered with new leaves from other places in the neighborhood (after all, leaves don’t really respect boundaries). But it will not diminish the work I accomplished this morning nor the sense of satisfaction I am enjoying this evening. And for that I am most particularly grateful.
