The Importance of Insignificance

Earlier this week I came across an album one of my Facebook friends posted, full of photos of the Rocky Mountains. This woman always has the most unique angle, the best shot or the most creative perspective to capture her current elements. Looking through the photos, I couldn’t help but think about how different her current setting is to her previous one. We used to reside near the same town, surrounded with flat fields and rows of corn and whispering creeks. Now she wakes to the Rockies.

I enjoyed looking through her new (for years now) scenery and admiring how different it is to mine. Then I saw a comment.

“beautiful pictures. makes me feel insignificant.”

I liked that. 

I think it is ok to feel insignificant every so often. In fact, I believe it’s a good thing. Feeling insignificant has a punch-in-the-gut way of reminding us that we’re part of something bigger than ourselves.

Stephen Emerson

It’s ok to feel insignificant when you don’t make the team. That experience only pushes you to one day discover your talents. And from talents, you can typically discover your passion. And there is nothing better than unearthing your passion. Oh, dribbling a basketball through your legs? When you’re 85 and reflecting you won’t wish you had done more of it.

It’s ok to feel insignificant when the storm delivers havoc to everything you’ve ever considered normal. The winds will blow, the lightening will strike, waters will rise and things will blow away never to be seen again. Sometimes nature puts on a show to remind us who is in charge. And by storm, I mean weather storm, health storm, people storm, career storm or life storm in general.

It’s ok to feel insignificant when standing next to an endless ocean, under a Kansas sky full of a million stars or within a magnificent mountain range. It is not ok to feel insignificant when standing next to another person. No matter how big they are. Or what they're wearing. 

It’s ok to feel insignificant when waiting on hold with the cable company. What you're experiencing is actually called shoddy customer service. When you finally speak to a representative (who certainly cares about your call), simply and sternly let them know you’re cancelling your service and switching to the competitor. You will no longer feel insignificant.

It’s ok to feel insignificant when you’re overwhelmed with the stuff that can fill up hours, days, weeks, months and years. But you’re also in control of that (in)significance. There are only 940 Saturdays between your child’s birth and when they turn 18. Don’t want to spend those Saturdays at birthday parties watching 5-year-old strangers unwrap Legos and Frozen dolls? Don’t.

Marsha Behm's image "Child Fishing on Lake Allegan."

It’s ok to feel insignificant when you don’t get the job. It humbles you. Teaches you to think on your feet. Guides to where you need to improve. Transforms you into a better speaker. Allows you to grow. Opens better doors. Give you an excuse to buy a new suit.

It’s ok to feel insignificant when you’ve planned, planted, watered and tended the perfect garden and an animal utilizes it as a salad bar. Get yourself a live trap and teach that wascally wabbit who is truly insignificant.

It’s ok to feel insignificant when you look at your life’s goal sheet. That means you’re setting out to do something great. And you still have a long way to go. That’s the best part. That’s the life part.

It’s ok to feel insignificant when you keep track of your months by endless bill, payment stubs and looming deadlines. In this case, the surefire way to be reminded that you’re not insignificant is to miss a payment. They’ll find you.

It’s ok to feel insignificant. Though no one else should ever make you feel that way. 
It’s gratifying to feel insignificant. 
It’s powerful beyond measure. 
Insignificance puts us in our place. 
Insignificance allows us to focus on something bigger than ourselves.
In our small, disconnected, important, individualized place. 

Is it time you go somewhere to feel insignificant?

 Credit

Clear The Air

I'm not mad, I just need to know when I can open the windows again. 

I learned to fall asleep with the crickets' music and rain falling on the roof of our front porch. Fresh air would move across our shared room and carry out anything that didn't belong there. Like too much of this stuff:

When I moved to Purdue I slept in the cold air room of the Alpha Chi Omega sorority. Wind, leaves and snow would each blow in August through May, but the fresh air cleaned out the room that held 80 sleeping gals and kept us healthy. Mostly. 

I pulled this from the AXO Alpha Beta Facebook page 

After going to college I had actually forgotten what it was like to have a super angry Mom. It had, after all, been years (weeks) since Luke left the hydrant running and she'd lost her head. But then I came home on Christmas break - and before bed - opened all four large windows of my bedroom to recreate the fresh air paradise of my youth. And college. 

Boy was Momma mad to learn turning up the thermostat throughout the night did nothing to alleviate the draft that was traveling under my bedroom door.

Now as a wife, I'm a huge promoter of wool socks and electric blankets if that means we can open the windows to air out the house while there is still frost on the ground. Dead flies, damp basement, Muck Boots, wet gloves, dirty dishrags, all things man...each proponents of cooped-up-house-smell, and in turn creating cramped-up-Lindsay-paranoia. 

I'm not concerned with the fact that fully opening the windows in this old house may cause reason for alarm once we return home after being gone. Cody got home on day earlier this month and initially thought our house had been broken into. The flowers once on the kitchen counter were scattered across the linoleum. The screen of the window over the kitchen sink was thrown across the floor. Our mail pile stretched from the kitchen to the dining area. Did someone enter through the window? No. I had opened the window too far, didn't secure the screen and left the house open to a storm. Floor was wet, bills were wet, but the house smelled great. You just can't buy that thunderstorm in my kitchen smell!

We've had three birds in our house because of my need to clear the air. I get so excited about a fresh breeze that I fail to remember that some windows simply don't have screens. I've had to run through the house under an umbrella, resuscitate an old fern and leave the house for hours at a time hoping the problem would just take care of itself, i.e. avian heart attack. 

So you can imagine my distress when temperatures dropped over the last week and I'm left with nothing to do but close the windows. 

False. Nobody puts baby in the corner. And shuts the windows. 

I opened the windows before bed Monday night hoping that if we just fell asleep, the house could breathe a bit and we'd not notice that temperatures were dipping into the 40s. Wrong. I woke to Cody stammering around trying to find the windows without his glasses and saying something about frostbite on his arm. I fell back asleep to a dream that I was an eskimo. Weird. 

The thermostat read 53º went I got in the shower the next morning. But that didn't bother me nearly as much as learning that it was so chilly in the house that I'd bottomed out on the recommended temperature at which you're supposed to keep aerosol hairspray. The liquid gold was stagnant. I can work around frostbite, but no Frizz Ease? Count me out. 

I've used the oven for the first time in weeks just to have the ability to leave the oven door open (once shut off) to heat the kitchen while I do the dishes. Extra warmth. I've also inconveniently forgot to shut it off (twice) to warm the kitchen a little bit longer. It's much easier than turning on the furnace. Yes, Cody pays the electric bill and I buy the fuel oil. Why do you ask? 

We've been living in operation Clear The Air for two months now and I can finally walk into the mudroom and not smell iodine from February. It just lingered. 

My goal is to walk into our house with my eyes shut and not know if I'm home or in a rainforest. I think that if a few more thunderstorms roll through the kitchen and Cody tracks in another 10 pounds of grass clippings from mowing pastures we'll be well on our way. 

Toucans aren't native of Indiana, right?

Things That Matter

I don't know if my head is more likely to spin or explode, but something bad is fixin' to happen. 

One morning this week I watched The Today Show as Matt Lauer tried to seamlessly transition from one major crisis to another. He went from emotionally covering the mass destruction in Nepal to very matter-of-factly reviewing the suspensions Tom Brady would suffer (I use that term so, so loosely) as a result of Deflate Gate. 

I stood in front of our TV in awe, a toothbrush in my mouth and a question in my head: How do those two stories even deserve the same airtime in a primetime spot? 

They don't. 

Something as trivial as the amount of air in a ball used in a glorified American sport (and I love football as much as the next person - Go Steelers) has no place following a story regarding a natural disaster that has buried alive more than 8,000 people. 

Do you get it? When you step back and really appraise life's spirit, some things matter and some things simply don't. 

What are the things that matter? 
Well, I can only start this morning with a brief list:

Things that matter:
Believing in something bigger than yourself. 

Things that don't: 
A false sense that you have to get through it alone. 

Things that matter:
Engaging in conversation and sharing a meal with others. 

Things that don't: 
Believing that your cell phone is more interesting than the people physically around you. 

Things that matter:
Fresh air in your lungs, compliments of the great outdoors. 

Things that don't: 
Airing out your problems to solicit attention.

The best current commercial:

Cabela's Disconnect Day

Things that matter:
Living within your means. 

Things that don't: 
Living with a strange, sad hunger to impress others with material things. 

Things that matter:
Our forgotten soldiers - on foreign lands and home - who have undergone immeasurable emotional, physical and mental damage and immediate, irreversible changes.  

Things that don't: 
Bruce Jenner.

Marine Staff Sgt. John Jones 

from the "Injured Soldiers" collection 

by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders.

Things that matter:
Deadlines, as they hold you accountable, on time and productive. 

Things that don't: 
Timelines. Worry not about how you envisioned the last ten years going or the next ten years unfolding. The plan and timeline you're referencing are simply not your own. 

Things that matter:
Expiration dates on drugs. 

Things that don't:
Expiration dates on salad dressing. 

Things that matter:
How you use past experiences to emulate an example of treating others well and with kindness. 

Things that don't: 
How poorly someone has treated you in the past. 

Things that matter:
Realizing and remembering that some of your best memories will come from slow, ordinary days.  

Things that don't: 
The false sense that if you don't hurry, you'll get left behind. 

Things that matter:
The orange low fuel warning light. 

Things that don't:
The "It won't happen to me" mentality.

Things that matter:
Giving your best self every single day.

Things that don't:
Worrying about living up to someone else's standards.

Things that matter:
Education, it’s invaluable. 

Things that don’t:
Not trying, wanting, or risking learning something new each day.

Things that matter:
People and relationships.


Things that don’t:
Things. 

There are so many more, but this week my evenings and mornings are consumed with the exciting task of watching heat. My Stockman's Wife duties generally trump the time I set aside for creative writing. 

What are the things that matter - or the things that don't - from your perspective? This can be a working document, and I'd be happy to add your thoughts if you'll comment.

Is There Life Out There

It seems like five years ago, and yesterday at the same time, that I traveled back to Purdue University to navigate my late-twenties-something self through the Executive Agribusiness Program with Land O'Lakes. Tomorrow morning at 8:30 I'll present my thesis in front of my classmates, Purdue faculty, CEOs from across the United States and the Land O'Lakes senior leadership team. And then I'll graduate. 

Me? 
Nervous?
...I'm as nervous as a cat on a hot tin roof. 

But my boss left me with words of encouragement Monday: No matter how bad you screw this up, you probably won't lose your job. 

Thanks, Boss. 

Until this course work, I hadn't thought much about a certain song. Not since my confident, third grade self stood in front of the entire elementary school and sang it in the variety show. I was young and I didn't fully understand the message. But twenty years later, this entire process of going back to school and learning to study and apply concepts again has taken me back to Reba's Is There Life Out There. 

By marking things off my life's to-do list prior to getting married just days before age 29, I've avoided the is there life out there? question. But I can still soundly relate to the idea of stress and work/life balance that comes along with curriculum and home. 

Granted, we have no children to read bedtime stories, as seen in the music video. We do, however, have quite a few cows that get cranky when you postpone feeding due to an online homework submission deadline looming ahead. 

And, if Cody would have spilled something on my thesis (as seen in the music video), I (probably) would not have lost my head and made him use a hair dryer to salvage the report. I would have simply printed another copy. Times have changed. 

But the idea of surrendering some things to achieve others has not.I've stretched myself, my resources and my time to get to where I'll be Thursday morning. All for accomplishing a goal of greater education. I've also become a shareholder in post it notes and highlighters. 

How about you?

What sacrifices - small or large - are you making right now to put yourself, your future or your family, in the right direction? 

Or perhaps you're on the other end of the song? The beginning of it. Maybe you're the one who yearns for something greater than what you have now. Maybe you're wondering: Is there life out there? So much you haven't done?

Where ever you stand, remember these three things:

1. If it's still in your mind, it's worth taking the risk. 
2. If I can learn to study again, you can pretty much do anything in the entire world. Ever. 
3. Your hair will never look as cray cray as Reba's did in this video. Bless her heart. 

I'm going to get back to rehearsing my thesis presentation in my hotel room while you will hopefully watch the music video to Is There Life Out There, below. I still cry like a baby when I see her in that cap and gown. 

But if you don't watch the video, can you do one thing? 
Wish me luck! 

YouTube

She married when she was twenty

She thought she was ready

Now she's not so sure

She thought she'd done some living

But now she's just wonderin'

What she's living for

Now she's feeling that there's something more

Is there life out there

So much she hasn't done

Is there life beyond

Her family and her home

She's done what she should

Should she do what she dares

She doesn't want to leave

She's just wonderin

Is there life out there

She's always lived for tomorrow

She's never learned how

To live for today

She's dyin' to try something foolish

Do something crazy

Or just get away

Something for herself for a change

Is there life out there

So much she hasn't done

Is there life beyond

Her family and her home

She's done what she should

Should she do what she dares

She doesn't want to leave

She's just wonderin

Is there life out there

There's a place in the sun that she's never been

Where life is fair and time is a friend

Would she do it the same as she did back then

She looks out the window and wonders again

Is there life out there

So much she hasn't done

Is there life beyond

Her family and her home

She's done what she should

Should she do what she dares

She doesn't want to leave

She's just wonderin

Is there life out there

Is there life out there

So much she hasn't done

Is there life beyond

Her family and her home

She's done what she should

Should she do what she dares

She doesn't want to leave

She's just wonderin

Is there life out there