The Real World

The Real World                                            

By John W. Vander Velden

 

Once someone told me, I didn’t know the real world.  That statement troubled me.  I suppose I had lived in a sheltered realm, separated from many of the things others had to face.  I understood that.  But did that mean I had no concept of “reality”?  I wondered.  By chance, I bumped into my pastor in a fast food joint.  We sat together and spoke on a wide variety of subjects…as people might do with their pastor.  At one point I told him about this person’s charge… That I didn’t know the real world.  The words he shared then left a mark.  He told me that if I did not know the real world, then nobody did.  Rev. John pointed out that my profession engulfed me in life’s reality…daily.

From that conversation, I came up with a phrase I have used in a few of my stories, “The mud and blood of life.”   I begin my forty-third year as a full time farmer…well these days it is a little less full time.  And feel myself fortunate that this life has given me opportunities few of my generation share.  Only two percent of our nation’s population can call themselves farmers.  Oh, how agriculture has changed during my tenure.

My world…real or not…is made up of earth and sky…of new life bursting into my environment…of growth and maturity…and yes, of death’s reality as well.  I have lived more than forty years in “the mud and blood of life”, and am grateful.  Does that mean each day has been a joyful experience?  Oh no, by no means.  For to face the challenges of an ever changing world…driven by so many things beyond human control…is often a difficult, heartbreaking task.  Too often failure seems the only possible result as onward I trudge, to daily face carefully laid plans that are tossed aside as new ones must be generated “on the fly”.  But when the dust settles…on those days when the soil is dry enough…most days I can look back and see things achieved.  It may be less that I had originally hoped, but my world, real or not, has moved forward.

Soon I begin again the task that has framed my life.  Soon the roar of tractors will be heard on our farm.  The work of this season lies before me.  The total of that job seems too great for these “bones” to do.  But I must not look too hard at the “total” but rather at the smaller “bites”, as daily I pick up the load and stretch forward, making small steps of the grand journey.  Soon I will see the rows of new life reaching upward against all odds.  Green will return to the now barren land.  I will have no time for pride, for the task goes day after day.

I will not tell you that my world, or life, is more real than your world.  For each of us find ourselves surrounded by so many things…things that form our own personal “real” world.  Our jobs, our families, our homes, our neighbors, the places we shop, the people we meet and how we come to meet them, these people, places, and things surround us as we live our lives.  These are the things that are real to each of us.  Understanding that, means you know your “real” world…. It is indeed a real place.

Though each person’s “real” world is as unique as the wonderful people that fill it, we have something in common.  For though not all know it, there is one thing we all share.  I am fortunate that my profession exposes me to so many “earthy” experiences.  That in these simple things I could see something that modern technology…the rush of the world and society…has hidden.  For I have come to grasp, what to me, is the greatest reality of all.  You see I have never been in charge…not really.  In all my years of experience…with all the training that the school of life has provided…can I cause the simplest seed to sprout?  Oh, I can carefully place tens of thousands in neat rows.  Place those seeds in prepared soil at precise depth.  Provide correct amounts of nutrients for its health.  But then it is completely beyond my control.  I trust that GOD will cause the tiny thing I have placed in the soil to become…eventually…the plant producing the grain I will harvest.  Too easily taken for granted is the “magic” of real life.  Too easily we overlook the unexplainable…trying to force fit explanations that leave out…or worse…ignore GOD’s part of the equation.  For GOD is the most “real” part of our world!

(798 Words)