It’s firewood time! No it’s not just  fall or late summer, or even back to school time. It’s firewood time, and there are some life lessons here.

Firewood time is when I, and perhaps anyone else who is brave enough to admit it, scrambles to put up a big pile of firewood to be used for winter warming. This should have been done months ago! LOL.

From left to right Andy, myself and Mike

But every year I get it done just barely in time to let it dry out and season enough to burn well. And then I say “I’ll never wait till the last minute again!” Ha!

I guess that’s the first lesson one can glean from firewood or at least the way I wait till the last minute to get mine ready – procrastination is a part of life. Most of us do our best work when under pressure. I suspect we should cherish pressure. LOL.

That seasoning part is a lesson also. You see, firewood does not burn well unless it’s totally dry. If you cut up a live tree, the wood is full of sap (moisture) and that can take weeks if not months to dry out properly. So we call it seasoned when it’s become dry enough to burn. Hmmmm, I suspect this is a lesson in patience. I wonder what else I should have patience with? Plenty!

And then there is the cutting of the firewood with the chain saw. It helps to sharpen the saw blade first. Every year I start cutting and wonder why these dang logs are so hard to cut! After struggling for hours I finally come to realize that I forgot to sharpen the blade. Duhhh!!! So I then go to the garage, sharpen the blade, and then voila! Sharpening the blade makes all the difference. I guess proper preparation is another lesson here. And better yet, do the preparation first!! LOL.

So then, after the logs are cut, then they need to be split. The splitting is totally necessary because they won’t fit in the wood stove whole, and they dry out faster. Splitting holds another life lesson – don’t go against the grain! Yes, every piece of wood has a grain pattern. You can see the grain quite clearly. Try to split against the grain and you’ve got a battle on your hands. But split along the grain and you succeed easily. Success. Aha! Perhaps we should all strive to look for the grain, the easier way to do something, before we take a whack at anything! It hurts when I take a whack at a log going against the grain. I wonder what pains we could avoid in our lives if we first take the time to look things over before we ……

Work with the grain not against it.

It would normally take me about 2-3 weeks of working a few hours a day to obtain a large enough pile of firewood for my heating needs. But then God blessed me with some special helpers called kids.  My two boys are now old enough to be a tremendous help to me. I cut, Andy splits, and Mike stacks. Now we get the job done in about 1 week. Another lesson – teamwork!

But the best lesson of all will come on a screaming cold winter evening, when the sky is clear and  stars are bright, and the wind is howling from the north.  I’ll realize that all the hard work of cutting, splitting and stacking was worthwhile as I feel the warmth of the fire on my toes.

Warm Toes = Gratefulness

It’s a lesson of gratefulness.

What are you grateful about?

I suspect my dog is grateful too!

By the way, have you seen my other blog sites?

For the general public: http://www.wholehealthhealing.com.

Specifically for doctors: http://www.reclaimthejoy.com

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Recently my wife and I had a conversation with a lady. She did most of the talking. The topic was children and college.  God help us!

It was a beautiful spring day, so I wonder now and regret why I didn’t intervene and change the subject or suggest we play a game like cards, dice or even Russian roulette; anything would have been less painful. LOL.

What was painful about it was that the topic, children and college, is and always will be dominated by the parent with the bigger vision for their child, the bigger, more materialistic worldly vision that is. I’m happy to report that my wife and I don’t qualify for that position.  We still think kids should be content to fulfill their goals, not ours. That brings my wife and I contentment, a vital component of health and wellness. Unfortunately, many other parents believe it’s their duty to not only intervene, and not only to control, but to actually make the goals for their children. That worldly way leads to tremendous stress for parents and children.

So this visitor, who I will keep anonymous, spent the afternoon bragging about her children’s potential and how she will guide them in their activities, all designed to qualify them for select colleges.(Her 4 kids were all under 14).

I did try to put in my two cents, explaining that I know many very content people who wouldn’t qualify for what is commonly recognized as success, that being owners of oversized houses, expensive cars, trophy spouses, designer children (i.e. children with the best of everything like expensive orthodontia, manicures, various therapies, and even unnecessary after school extracurricular activities). But the worldly lady kept coming back with “Oh, I checked it out and there are thousands of parents preparing their children for elite schools, there’s a lot of completion out there”.

Now settle down, I’m not criticizing success, especially when it’s acquired ethically, through good old fashioned innovation, creativity and hard work. What I’m saying is that many people, these days more than ever, get all the materialism that accompanies success confused with happiness and contentment.

That’s the worldly way, and working myself in the field of healthcare for over 25 years, I know all too well the trouble that accompanies the overly driven quest for money, and then more money. In fact I wrote a book on the subject called Reclaim the Joy of Practice – An Advanced Guide for Advancing Doctors. The jist of the book is that joy, happiness, and contentment does not come from seeking and making money, or even going to the best schools. You would be amazed how messed up and miserable many people are who you would classify as successful, including doctors.

This worldly way of pursuing success by rigging one’s life or the life of one’s children, produces a very stressful existence because of the very superficial appearance of success and the dead end road it leads to. Yes, the stress in this lady’s family was quite apparent.

So my wife and I have a strategy, we will certainly insist our kids do their homework and fulfill all their school requirements, we will do our best to introduce them to a wide range of experiences and professions, we will encourage higher education, and then we will listen to their choices and be supportive of them. If that strategy leads my kids to a kind of greatness the world recognizes we will celebrate. If it leads my kids to anything else, we will also celebrate their individual greatness – both outcomes are success that really counts because the kids themselves chose and did it, not us parents.

How do you define success? Do you think your definition might be the source of your stress?

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