Bare Feet On A Freshly Cut Lawn

It’s rained a lot lately. That rain has caused the grass to really grow. I spent some time late yesterday walking nearly every square inch of our yard behind a lawnmower.

The hour and a half to complete this task, although physically demanding, has become a bit of quality time away from the bearing down of immediate needs from things and people. Not that those things get totally erased from my mind during this time because I often find myself searching on solutions and answers for the problems and questions inhabiting my mind at the time even amid the dust and pollen and flying pieces of grass. Plug in the iPod, throw on a baseball cap and get going. A bit of sweat, some pulling and some pushing to the sounds of songs I have heard hundreds of times before and eventually the tall strands of grass and their just-as-present-companions, the weeds, are cut down to size for a few days. Follow this with a trip up and down the walkway and driveway with the leaf blower to move the clippings off the concrete and this task is complete, for now.

Of course, for my wife and our neighbors the payoff is immediate. The yard looks better, neater and cleaner. For me though, the payoff is later. After I finish cutting the yard, my needs are water, cooling off and sitting down to rest creaky bones. I try to fulfill my immediate needs knowing I have punched my ticket to be cashed in for my payoff later.

For me, the payoff from the freshly cut yard is the next morning. I make my way down the hall as the sun rises. I look out the window onto the backyard. I then walk to the living room and open the blinds to peer out at the yard there. There’s my payoff. A yard, wet with dew, so wet that the shade of green is much deeper and darker than any other time during the day. The blades of grass all stand in uniform length as the sun slides off the slippery blades. In the chill of the morning, the grass even looks like it might be a few degrees cooler than the morning’s air temperature. Then when I step onto the back deck or the front porch, a slight breeze awakens my sense of smell with the aroma of freshly cut grass. The smell is so strong, yet, so sweet, I can almost taste it.

That payoff almost always takes me back to my youth. It takes me back to when the smell of a freshly cut yard only served as backdrop to a baseball field, a football field or a volleyball court in the daytime and a place to chase June bugs and lightning bugs into the cusp of the night. Bare feet braved rocks that mysteriously found their way into the yard. Those same feet endured bee stings when they went trampling into more dangerous territory. Those same feet turned dark from the time spent traveling between the yard and the red Georgia clay.

The payoff is always short. I hear the day ahead calling my name and have to get ready for what lies ahead. I turn back and go inside to prepare for the rest of the day knowing I may very well find myself back out here at day's end as the last rays of sun slip away, standing in my bare feet waiting for a lightning bug to pass by.

Talking Just To Be Heard

This week, I found it humorous to read someone online attempt to explain to someone else how important their job was. It made me wonder if someone has to justify such importance then how important could the job really be. Of course, to this person the job is vitally important, so much so that it tends to top what anyone else does for a living, especially right at that very moment. And, of course, to the person doing the justifying, there is importance, immediacy, pressure, pride as it relates to a profession.

Still, it is as if we somehow, consciously or unconsciously, feel compelled to justify what we do for a living so that we know in some grand scheme we matter. We need affirmation from somewhere so instead of waiting on that from a co-worker or a superior, we provide it on our own, without a lot of, or sometimes without any, prompting from anyone else.

I play this game, too. I want to think what I do is important. I want others to know I am relevant. I need to feel significant in some way. Of course, while I am busy considering how important what I do is and how important I truly am, I brush away the fleeting memories of feeling the exact same way when I left previous jobs only to discover shortly after I left, somehow the world there still turned without me and life went on.

This game is so tiring. It seems as if it’s billions of not-so-tiny voices speaking up to say, “ME! ME! ME! ME! ME! LOOK AT ME!!!” Amidst it all, the chest-thumping appears to often be wrapped in the context of “and when you do look at me, you should recognize and then acknowledge how important I am!”

I suppose we all need some validation. Maybe we need such confirmation if we are disgruntled with what we do or if we feel we aren’t compensated as we should be or if we invest our whole being in what we do for work. Or maybe we just like to hear the sound of our own voice.

It also seems this is one of those great contradictions that inhabit our times. We are told we should speak up and speak out because what we feel, what we think and what we know is important. We are also told we should listen because listening is a cornerstone to good communication skills. So, we speak up and speak out but by doing so we sometimes drown out others who feel more passionately, who think differently or who just flat out know better because frankly, we don’t know when to shut up, especially when it comes to talking about ourselves. And then when we do close our traps long enough to let others have their say we are too wrapped up in trying to determine what we should say next that we pounce on the first quiet moment we recognize just so we can expound more on our own greatness.

In today’s world of ‘debate’ on the cable TV outlets, ‘you’re stupid’, ‘no, you’re more stupider’ discussion on online comment boards and “I said it and that’s ‘nuff said” attitude all around, maybe taking time to soak in some quiet and basking in the reflection it brings might make us realize the really important things in life and give us something really important to talk about later.