Stoic Meditation #16 - Resilience, Self-Sufficiency, and Sticky Lessons

"Work with what you have control of and you’ll have your hands full." - James Stockdale, "Courage under Fire"

Apr 08, 2025

"The cucumber is bitter? Then throw it out.
There are brambles in the path? Then go around them.
That’s all you need to know. Nothing more. Don’t demand to know “why such things exist.” Anyone who understands the world will laugh at you, just as a carpenter would if you seemed shocked at finding sawdust in his workshop, or a shoemaker at scraps of leather left over from work.
Of course, they have a place to dispose of these; nature has no door to sweep things out of. But the wonderful thing about its workmanship is how, faced with that limitation, it takes everything within it that seems broken, old and useless, transforms it into itself, and makes new things from it. So that it doesn’t need material from any outside source, or anywhere to dispose of what's left over. It relies on itself for all it needs: space, material, and labor."
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 8.50

[NB: Several times a day, when engaged with the details of completing some task, a thought arises that reminds me of where and when I learned some principle or gained some insight related to the task at hand. I call them "sticky lessons" for they come to mind often and have been a part of who I am ever since I learned them.]

When a tree stump needs to be removed, remove it.

Mr. Graves was one of the neighbors where I grew up. He served in Vietnam and was away from his family for long stretches. I was 9 or 10 years old when he offered me $1 to help him dig an apple tree stump out of his yard. Mr. Graves did the ax work and I did the shovel work. I did my best to keep up and match his effort. When the stump was out, Mr. Graves paid me my dollar. But much more importantly, he paid me an extremely important compliment. "You're good with a shovel, Gregory. You'll always have a job if you can work a shovel."

It was certainly a healthy bump to my confidence to hear that I was good at something. That kind of feedback didn't happen at home, where if I heard anything at all it had to do with how things weren't done good enough, fast enough, or both. Much more than the positive assessment of my work, Mr. Graves' comment moved my mind out into the future and eased my fear and anxiety about surviving in the adult world. I can work a shove so I will earn a living and be able to take care of myself.

I've thought of Mr. Graves and his comment many times over the years, particularly when economic times were tough and bills or potential layoffs were looming. I faced those issues with a calm confidence that if things really got bad, I could always find a shovel job. It wasn't so much that I would need to literally find a shovel job, rather that I have no pride or status hangups that would prevent me from taking a lesser job if it meant being able to care for my family. These were the seeds of my resilience. Having skills meant I could survive and thrive in the world.

I also learned...

Accomplishing difficult things takes work. If I don't do it, someone else will have to. There's no way around this, whether the work is physical or mental.
Difficult things are easier if the effort is shared. Over the years I've learned I don't even have to like whomever I'm sharing the effort with. Sometimes, all that matters is that you're working with someone who's competent at what needs to be done.
The satisfaction and appreciation that follows from having completed something difficult is unparalleled, even if the results aren't as good or weren't completed as fast as someone more professional might achieve. Many times I've been working in the yard - raking leaves, hanging Christmas lights, whatever - and someone will stop and say "I'll do that for you for $X." I decline and they seem puzzled, not understanding that I want to do what they're offering to take away, that paying them is less desirable and satisfying on several fronts.

An artifact of this attitude is that when things break and I don't know how they work, I don't just throw them out. I break them apart to find out if I can discover why they failed. More and more this is a dead end as electronics are an integral part of just about everything it seems.

Mr. Graves' sticky lesson came forward yesterday as I set about the task of actually removing the stump from a 40' blue spruce pine tree that fell over in a wind storm almost exactly a year ago.

After clearing away the branches and trunk, the stump was left to be dealt with later.

Well, yesterday was "later." The wind had done half the work. The other half was left to me. Yes, I could have hired out the work, but at a cost of $1,000. I'm still cheep labor, even at my age. More importantly, I believe it's important to do physically difficult things. Not just unpleasant thing, but really difficult things. Work that takes you to the edge of your physical abilities. Two years ago it was laying in 80' of culvert. Last year it was removing a 40' tree from the street and building 125' of retaining wall. So far, this year involves removing a sizable stump. So with shovel and ax in hand, the help of my trusty pickup truck, and the words of Mr. Graves in mind, out it came.

One unique aspect to this particular effort was the attachment I had to this tree. I love trees and this was a magnificent tree. To satisfy my own sense of closure, I felt the need to complete it's removal. Most of the needles and smaller branches from this tree have been distributed for ground cover and compost, the larger branches were firewood this past winter, and much of the trunk will be used in the woodshop and crafted into multiple projects. The stump will be cut apart and used as the basis for Hügelkultur raised beds. Better it remain a part of my yard than buried in a landfill somewhere.

I ended the day sore, exhausted, and immensely satisfied. As I get older, I expect working at the edge of my physical abilities will look more and more like everyday tasks. But yesterday was not that day!