And then there’s the fence. . .
Published in the World Journal, May 14th Issue
Do you ever have the days when work is crazy and the kids are loud, there are dishes in the sink and there’s that one piece of mail that’s important enough you can’t throw away but there’s no room or magnets left on the fridge to put anything more up there, and then you look in your backyard and see that stupid aging fence staring you down. The dilapidated fence that probably should have been replaced before you even moved into the house, and you can’t even begin to imagine where you’ll find the time or money to get around to dealing with it? Maybe it’s just me.
This has been a season of overwhelm, even for those who have beautiful new-ish fences, and sometimes the demand for time and resources can muddle everything into a tornado of needs that feels like it’s going to sweep away the entire town.
Everyone has their fences, even if they aren’t fences. They have some last straw that’s so heavy it makes everything tumble into hopelessness. I’ve unfortunately found a parallel between my personal and professional life in this sense.
When you’re working hard for a community that operates with so little, sometimes you get stuck in the reactive of keeping things running, only to look up and see that fence and think, “What’s the point?” The fence in community work could be an eyesore in an area you’re trying to beautify, a funding gap so big it blocks out the sun, or — I don’t know — a five-day water main break that shuts down the entire town and screams “FAILING INFRASTRUCTURE!” loud enough they hear it in Grand Junction, or something like that.
The truth is, you can’t handle it, at least not by yourself. In those moments, giving up is sometimes a healthy response. If our ancient human ancestors had not had a healthy sense for what they could and could not manage with the capabilities and resources they had, we wouldn’t be here today. It’s an important survival skill to look between a mammoth and your single stone spear a few times and decide that your efforts are best spent elsewhere. So there it is: deep evolutionary validation for you (and me) to be completely and totally overwhelmed.
Today, my fences have the best of me. Tomorrow, I’ll remember that we did take down mammoths, and crossed oceans and mountains, built cities atop water ways, and just recently did another loop-de-loop around the moon. Because we can handle the fence and so much more, when we have other people to help find the way. And when I’m working with the right people, I can scoff at the fence being our greatest challenge.
