Farm to Family Connection - Commentary

FARM TO FAMILY COMMENTARY
---Select commentary from a weekly column by Curt Arens published in the Cedar County News, Hartington, NE

April 2008

Pursuit of Happiness

Dear Friends,
I love Westerns. You name it – True Grit, the McClintocks, Silverado, Unforgiven – they are all great. The other night I was watching the movie, Tombstone, with Kurt Russell playing Wyatt Earp and Val Kilmer as Earp’s ailing sidekick, Doc Holliday.

In one of the movie’s last scenes, Doc is on his deathbed in a hospital in Colorado, and Earp is sitting beside his bed, talking about their lives and how things played out.

"I just want a normal life, Doc," says Earp to the dying Holliday.

"Wyatt, there is no normal life," Doc replies. "There is only life. Now, get on with it."

What a great line? I mean, there in a nutshell, is the wisdom we can all absorb, although it came from the mouth of a man who was known as a foul-talking, liquor-drinking, aimless, fearless, sickly, but extremely loyal gunslinger.

I hear people say that they just can’t wait until they are out of debt (me too!). They can’t wait until they can purchase a new truck or tractor. They can’t wait until their children are out of school. They can’t wait for it to cool off or heat up. They can’t wait for tomorrow, or the next day. They can’t wait, you know, for things to change from how they currently are.

I’m the same way. I am always looking to tomorrow, so sometimes, I often forget about the good things about today. I also believe that we are all waiting for things to get better. We are all just like Wyatt Earp, waiting for the good life to come along, or out seeking what we believe our version of the good life should be.

Here in Nebraska, though, if you believe our state’s motto on those big billboards, we should already be living the Good Life. But, I suppose we were never promised a rose garden.

Life is a thing of cycles. Some days are bad. Some days are good. Most of my days have both good and bad all jumbled up together in an undistinguishable mess. I’ve been told, and later have witnessed for myself, the other old adage, "Life is messy."

When Thomas Jefferson wrote the words in the Declaration of Independence, "We hold these truths to be self-evident," he was talking about "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." He didn’t say that happiness itself was a truth, or a right, or a promise of this democracy. He only promised the free and unfettered "pursuit" of happiness.

Of course, for many groups, throughout our nation’s history, even the pursuit of happiness proved to be a right that was difficult to claim. Obstacles were put up in the way.

Yet, I think some us believe that happiness is something that someone else, or some institution, can give us. One of my elders once told me that you have to choose to be happy. No one else can make you happy. That’s up to each of us as individuals.

Farmers, some say, are never happy. We always want better prices, even today. We always feel cheated by the government, or the weather, or those darn commodity prices.

But, even under extremely difficult circumstances, lots of folks around here choose to look at the bright side and to be happy where they are planted. They know that the good life, is life, as imperfect and unbalanced as it may seem some days. Farmers know this. Laborers know this. Local merchants know it too. Every day we get out of bed, I guess we should consider a good day in the good life.

So, I suppose we can look to the wisdom of the folks who wrote Val Kilmer’s lines for him in the movie Tombstone. There is no normal life. There is only life. So get on with it! Gotta love those Westerns.