​

Many moons ago, when I was in college, my friend Kevin and I decided to go to the County Fair.  We ate junk food, rode rides, played some carnival games, and laughed a lot.  Turns out, for reasons I cannot recall, Kevin had a gift certificate (??) for a free palm reading with a psychic who had a booth at the fair.  He didn’t want to use it, but I wanted to continue the fun and so I went in to see her.  She set the mood with her beads and crystals and deep smokey voice.  She asked me if I had any burning questions. My reply was meant to catch her off guard, which, as you might have predicted, is difficult to do to a psychic, and was evidenced by her smooth reply, “you just need balance in your life.”

​“But-“I protested, still wanting to throw her off her performance

“-Balance.” She cut me off (She was good!)

Well, as generic predictions and advice tend to do, this has become a theme in my life and a reason I even remember this non-event meant just for fun so long ago.  You see, it wasn’t until several years later, after Jason and I had wandered into each other’s lives and seemed to have stuck, that I learned that Jason’s Appalachian Trail name is (did you guess it?): Balance. (insert audible “aaawww” here)

But that was not to be the end of this generic prediction, oh no!  This comes around in varying frequencies.  In middle age, the balance challenge has been between living for today since no one is guaranteed tomorrow, and planning for tomorrow in case you get to have one.  In a physical labor career, I don’t think I can work until I’m 85, so I had better make at lease some allocation for tomorrow just in case I get there.  I don’t have it perfected, by any means, but this has been the balance occupation of the last several years.

Then, enter election cycle as they are wont to do.  And so, for the rest of the year, I must struggle to obtain the balance between sanity (no news is good news!), and staying engaged enough to make informed decisions in a few months. This balance challenge is a doozy!  It feels a bit like walking a tight rope over the precipice of doom and I wobble a lot.  Hopefully, my harnesses of joy and human connection can keep me from falling into that deep dark pit of despair, but I had better reinforce them when I can in case I lose my balance I’ve been seeking since I walked out of that carnival tent all those years ago.

When you get behind and begin the triage, (which always seems to happen in June/July on the farm) you start to ignore the periphery.  But the periphery, like a child building a sand castle,  grows over time until eventually it’s so impressed with itself that it starts to stomp around and scream “look at me! Look at me! Look at me!” And you can no longer blind yourself to it.

​The recycling begins to overflow.  The collapsed shelf begins to hinder the obtainment of supplies. The trailer of trash is towering. The piles of piles taunt you to near insanity. It is then that you re-prioritize the periphery to the forefront. You clean up your space a bit; take care of those little things that have been quietly nagging at you even though none of them appear to help you earn your living. Because sometimes, sanity becomes the priority. And when it does, it turns out that sanity does help you make your living.

At least it throws some semblance of organization to the chaos.  Which can be exactly how farm life feels in July.  Like you keep waking up to yet another Friday harvest day before that “stupid o’clock alarm” for Saturday markets.  Like it’s groundhog day but every Friday is a little bit different, you just don’t remember how you got to yet another Friday so quickly.  No matter how many times you just put one foot in front of the other with your head down, the weeds always move faster. Everything always moves faster. And the periphery is building again and you know it but you just can’t look at it yet.  Not until you get a little bit closer to insanity. Then you’ll re-prioritize again.

No matter your news source, the news is bad.  Really, news is inherently bad.  I mean, what’s newsworthy of nothing happened today?  That’s just the nature of the news beast.  But that doesn’t mean we as individuals, can’t inspect the cracks for levity and joy.

​In fact, I propose that it is our duty to do so.  We must maintain a side hustle in delight.  To fail to do so is  to besmirch our own human capacity for mirth.  It is to play the victim.  It is to wallow.  Don’t get me wrong:  I myself, have dabbled a bit in these dark acts.  It is rather easy to find oneself on that well-worn path of despair.  It is for this exact reason that we must accept the assignment of joy.  This is no small mission, my friends, but I know we are up to the task.

It requires concentration and effort and seeking.  You might, at first, sweat and grunt with the work of it, bowing under the weight of the impossibility of this mission.  But find that first delight (a child’s giggle, a bird’s morning tune, a gurgling creek, a snapdragon in the crack of a sidewalk, the relief of a cloud on a hot day), and the second becomes a slight bit easier to find.  Until, suddenly, you find yourself skipping amongst the clouds, enveloped in joy.

This is not to say that we should ignore the problems of the world around us. No, this is distinctly our side hustle.  But it is precisely this side hustle that better arms us to tackle the problems of the world around us. Without joy, we only exacerbate the problems.  We only throw more darkness on the despair with our useless complaints because without delight, what exactly is worth saving?  What is worth repairing? 

So soldier on, my comrades in arms against despair.  Let us find our joy and then fight to preserve it. Once we find our own, we will spread this contagion to the rest of the world and our levity will better lift those imposing boulders of darkness that pin our brethren down.