SEEDS: FIVE More Lessons From PAPO

Have you ever thought you were being taught something, but then realized the LESSON you learned was much more important?  Yeah, me too...

When I was a little boy, I thought I was learning how to farm...turns out, I was learning how to live.

Join Dave from some nostalgic reflection about:

• Sometimes You Have to Give the Seed a Chance
• The Meanest Mule Isn't Always the Worst Worker
• Everybody Knows Everybody's Business...Until They Need Help
• You Don't Have to Be Rich to Be Generous
• Every Farm Has Beavers
• Why Everyday Life Makes the Best Teacher
• Five Reasons Everyday Life Is the Greatest Classroom

Don't overlook the wisdom sitting on a porch somewhere.

Don't dismiss the grandfather fixing a tractor.

Don't ignore the grandmother canning tomatoes.

Don't underestimate the mechanic, the waitress, the rancher, the truck driver, the school custodian, or the neighbor who's lived through things Google can't explain.

Life whispers before it shouts.

"Sometimes you have to give the seed a chance to grow."

Giddyup!!!

Email David@Otalks.com or OWD@Otalks.com for comments, questions, or ideas for content on an upcoming O'talkin' with Dave podcast.  Otalks.com

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to O'Talkin' with Dave. Coming to you from his fortress in Sin City, where what happens in Vegas is talked about everywhere. Put your hands together for the pastor of positivity whose glass is always at least half full. Here's Dave.

SPEAKER_01 0:22

Hey, how are we doing out there? I hope you are great. I am top shelf and ready to go. A little change of venue today. Thought I'd mix it up a bit. But I've been I was in in the middle of nowhere doing some hiking and fishing and quads and all sorts of stuff for the last few weeks. And it reminded me of my Popo. You know who Popo is. If you don't, eh? He's in almost every one of these O talks, I'll tell you that. But just being outside of the city made me think of so many times that we were just on the farm, just doing nothing, doing it all day, though, and having a good time. And the farm never, it never failed to teach me something. When I was little, I thought I was learning how to farm or hunt or fish or help Popo fix something. All of that. What I was learning were the lessons that I've used my entire life, still do. And I forget about them. And so some of them came to my mind in the last few weeks, and I just wanted to share them with you. Will that work? All right. So Popo, I've told you a lot about him. This may be the first time you're hearing me talk about him if you're just starting to join. He was quiet. He wasn't a philosopher. I don't he never wrote a book. He read some Louis Lemour books before he'd go to bed at night. And he never gave speeches. I don't think I ever heard him quote any famous person or his boots were work boots. They all saw the dirt. But what he did, he grew tobacco. He raised corn. He fixed tractors and repaired machines. He was a machinist, so he could build just about anything. He was always there for his neighbors. He was so funny, but not in a joke-telling way. He loved to laugh. He'll let you be funny. He did all that. And he never let you know he was worried. He talked about serious things, but I don't think of him as a worrier, which is also great. Yeah. And somehow, without even trying, he taught me so many lessons. Hundreds. And they come to me from time to time. What amazes me now is that every conversation we had, it seemed about the farm or farming or the peace or the just something about how great it was. It was, I don't, it wasn't that big as far as farms go. He had a lot of wooded area and then farmland and a creek running through it. It's great. And then through the years, I have realized it was bigger than the farm. Life lessons. And you can use analogies or whatever. Recall an application. Yeah. So I'm just going to go over five today that hit me out of nowhere. So there's there was a time, it was in the spring, I'm 90% sure, that you put out you put out corn or soybeans or whatever. Back in the day when he did that to make a living, it was critical. And so now it was less about a living and more, okay, some extra money or grow corn to feed livestock or whatever. It wasn't a matter of life or death. But to some farmers it was. If you miss something in the process and your crops aren't what they need to be, that can hurt the family. But I remember this year I heard them talking about someone said that some of the seed was bad. And they think they got some bad seed. They all bought their seed at the same spot, usually. But nobody knew it for sure, and no one knew how widespread it was or how they were going to be affected. And then the more people talked, some of them thought, I can't risk this. They start looking at worst-case scenario. And they'll they would go find seed from somewhere else, and they would actually, once they've planted it, they would till it under. And it's this is not that unusual. I even checked it out to make sure that I didn't hear all this wrong. No, it's not unusual. A lot of times that's why you buy certified seed or something with the germination rates and all of these things. But these are farmers. These are farmers. And so some farmers immediately, I can't risk it. I plow it over, I plow it under and get some more seed. Others waited. Popo waited. And I asked him, aren't you worried that these seeds are bad? And he gets, it's he almost went Chinese farmer on me. Maybe. Then then why don't you why don't you do what they're doing? Because I didn't hear it. This was important. And he said something I've never forgotten. He said, Sometimes you have to give the seed a chance to grow. I've never forgotten that. I've never forgotten that. He I think he was talking about corn. I think he was talking about maybe soybeans. I'm pretty sure he was talking about people. This is a man who went to night school to become a machinist because he could tell long term, he didn't know if he could raise a family with all his kids and his dad on a farmer's wage. So he went to and then he went to work at Ford Motor Company for 36 years, then went back to the farm. Going back to the farm was his dream. Maybe dreams are part of giving seed a chance to grow. Could be businesses, friendships, marriage, children, ourselves. So many times. I haven't been ready for something, but I tried to do it, and then I gave up and tried something else. Sometimes we panic too quickly. Sometimes we quit too early. Yeah. Sometimes you gotta see, give seed a chance to grow. Yeah. Sometimes it's we're late to the game. So I thought about this and in true me fashion overanalyzed it, but I thought about that a lot. How many times I had been overlooked. Maybe it wasn't my time. A lot of people didn't give me a chance. And so some of the things I I take from this simple statement that he made about seeds is not every slow start is a failed start. Sometimes the growth is not visible. Some of them would dig, try to dig some of the seeds up to see if they are doing anything under there. Yeah. Roots come long before the leaves. Watermelons and pecans, y'all know that story. But sometimes a slow start doesn't mean a false start. Another thing, fear often demands action when patience requires wisdom. Oh my. I don't have a lot of patience. I hope there's a lot of wisdom in a little patience because I don't have it, man. Popo had it. To be a farmer, you have to have patience. You got to know when to pull the trigger as well. But doing something isn't always better than doing nothing. So some of you right now are thinking, well, David, you say do something, always do something. Action defeats worry. But yeah, that's true. However, what appears to be doing nothing is sometimes showing patience and waiting for the seed to grow, waiting for that spark, waiting for something to happen. But you're not waiting without a purpose. So fear makes us do things a lot of times when patience should win the day. Another thing, starting over, it has a cost. Think about all the different things. Now, for farmers to start over, it costs you a lot of time and effort and the cost of preparation and the seed and all that. So it has a cost. Every restart means giving up something. Giving up everything that you've already invested so far. And sometimes the smarter decision is waiting another week, another day. Don't just sit there, but don't pull the trigger. Don't till it under. Don't give up. Don't quit. Sometimes you need to wait just a little longer. I had a friend who was going to give up on his business and died a horrible couple of years. And wouldn't it be a shame if you gave up right before everything turned around? So starting over does have a cost. And then the hope. There's a lot of hope. I talked about the I did a whole podcast on farming and how much faith you have to have. Hope is not just wishful thinking. Hope is informed patience. You've got something that's giving you enough hope to where you can wait. Hope with patience, it watches. It adjusts to what it needs to. It doesn't panic. And then the last thing, even if it fails, you know you gave it every chance. Yeah, even if it is bad seed, you gave it every chance. There's a lot of peace in knowing you didn't quit too early. Now see, when I do these five different things I take from it, those are life lessons. One of the things I've had happen in the last year is I did everything I could, up to the last minute. And I made it known. It didn't work out the way I probably wanted it to. However, it worked out exactly how I needed it to. So my patience, my whatever was challenged and didn't work out, it seemed like a fail. It was not. It's what needed to happen. But I didn't give up. I'll take a lot from that. So give the seed a chance to grow. Does that mean mindlessly hope your way into failure? No. Just sometimes you think through that and you find the lessons, even if it fails. By the way, it wasn't bad seed. He had one of the best eight-acre crops I think he ever did. But he waited for it. He waited for it, and the seed came through. Yeah. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. All right. The second thing I remember, I remember this mule that his neighbor had. And it wasn't friendly. It wasn't nice. I don't know that, I don't know that he was dangerous, but he was definitely opinionated. If you walked behind him too carelessly, he'd let you know who he was and what he was capable of. I remember when we would go over there from time to time for whatever reason. It was usually just merely a social call. It was to check on something or lend or borrow or whatever. He would tell me, be careful around that mule. Be careful around that mule. That's about it. And it wasn't a pretty animal either. Wasn't a pretty animal. I'm not talking about mules. I don't want to get some big pushback from the mule lobby out there. However, if you tried to rush him, meaning make him go faster than he wanted to, he would just stop. I remember they would use him to pull a wagon. I guess way back in the day, he may have pulled a plow or something, way back in the day, if he was that old. But also, they used him to break a horse. They would tie a horse to it. It was a little spirited, and that mule would just stand there. And it calmed the horse down because the horse wasn't going to move him. But everybody seemed to not like this mule. And so I asked Popo, I said, why does he keep him? Why would he? And just Popo's man a few words. He said, because he works. What do you mean he works? You don't judge a mule on his personality. You judge him based on what he can do. Can he pull the wagon? Can he pull the loaded wagon when it would take three horses to do it? He's consistent. There's a life lesson right there. Some people are rough around the edges. You can probably think of a few people. Maybe they got big ears and look like a mule. I don't know. Some people are quiet, some are awkward. Some just don't smile enough. Some never learn their people skills. However, they can still be dependable. They can still be loyal, hardworking. You can count on them. Yeah, they're not the show pony, but when you need them, they're there. And a lot of people will confuse personality with character. Character pulls the load. Yeah. Sometimes charm is just, eh, it's just watching. It's not helping. And so I looked at that mule because I had never seen that mule work before. And as we were leaving, Papa looked, pointed over to this massive wagon. And I don't think it had anything in it. The big looks like something they would, the Oregon Trail or something like that. And he said, That mule can pull that wagon up the hill that we came to his house. We came up a hill. I forget what he called it. Anybody that's been there, all my family knows the name of this hill. I can't remember. But it's long and it turns and it's steep. He said, That mule can pull that wagon up the hill. Loaded. No problem. I never looked at that mule the same way again. I had no idea. It was just this mean, ugly animal. Yeah. Yeah, sometimes people are rough around the edges. Don't judge them on that. Judge them on their work. A lot of mules in my life. You'll look at them a little differently now. And then we would have, it's a small, it's a small community. So the third thing that I thought about is you go to the barber shop and you hang out and the men are talking. Some of them are even getting their hair cut. You go to Elmer B's, which is a local general store. I think it had a post office across the street, but there's not even a light in Melbourne, Kentucky, or there wasn't then. But you go around and you see it, you make small talk, and then you move on. And a lot of people, you can tell they had a par, it's not when I was there, but I remember the old party lines when people knows everybody, they know everybody's business. And then even like with the seed thing, if Papo was not, if everybody else wanted to till the seed under and he didn't, they'd talk bad about him or say he doesn't know what he's doing, or they'd question his intelligence. It was always. Everybody knew everybody's business. Farm communities have always had, we'll just call them nosy neighbors. What are they doing? They know every truck, they know who drives what. They know every dog, they know everything about each other. Yeah. They know who bought fertilizer, where they bought it, if they did something a little different, who sold cattle, who'd they sell it to? Why'd he sell it to him? Yeah. Oh, if they got a new tractor, somebody's uppity. I remember when my when he bought a new, he bought a new farm truck. Nice. Oh, everybody was looking. And he didn't really care, but he was aware. And it, everybody's in everybody else's business. And sometimes he would say something about it. Mama would definitely say something about it. Because she was pretty much in everybody's business, too. And I remember one day I asked him, I asked Papa, why is everybody so worried about everybody else? And he just smiled. And I remember what he said. He said, because their own business is hard enough, then they need to get in somebody else's. Somebody else needs to, he didn't say this. He just said that. Their own business is hard enough. They need something else. They need an outlet. They need to compare and contrast to make them feel better. And there's one guy in particular that always got on Papa's nerves. Or as much as one could. And so one of the that very same neighbor called while I was still there. I would go up there for a couple of weeks at a time. He called, needed some help. Papa was a machinist. He was pretty handy. And this guy was doing something. And it broke down. He knew Papa could either fix it or make a part or whatever. Get in a truck. Let's go. Yeah, he Popo showed up. No speeches. No, yeah, now you're calling for help. I know what you've been saying, blah, blah, blah. I know you're not this, you're not that. None of that. He just showed up with some tools and helped him out. Because that's what you do. I asked why on the way home. I learned more on the way home than and he said, people are more important than being right. He was confident. He was confident in whatever the problem was. And he could have held a grudge against this guy. Man, can you imagine? That would be the this would be the equivalent of somebody posting something about you. Oh my goodness. Yeah. Everybody's in everybody else's business until they need some help. And then we go back to the character on the mule. Character shows up and gets things done. So sometimes helping others it changes them. Sometimes it doesn't. But it always changes us. Makes us better. We learned. I'll never forget it. Then another one. I remember he didn't. He was, I would say he wasn't wealthy. He didn't have a million dollars in the bank. He did all right. He saved his money. When he passed, his estate was considerable. But the thing is, they lived very simple lives. I remember the first time I ever we would go out and eat. Just if we were on the road and couldn't get home in time, sometimes we'd go out and eat, so Mama didn't have to cook, but not very often. Not very often. They saved their money. And farmers understand something that truly wealthy people probably never learn. Yeah. You don't have to be rich to be generous. You don't always have extra on the farm. That's why you eat leftovers so many times. We would eat what's leftover from dinner. Mama would do something the next day for lunch, or she would make that go as far as she could. Even when they had plenty. Sometimes you gotta share. Sometimes it's as a community you have to share. I watch Papa give away stuff from their garden so often. I saw him, he would brag about certain things, and part of it was look how you're proud of your garden. I think people will judge their self-worth sometimes by how large their tomatoes are or how quickly they ripen or whatever. And so people share. If you have extra of this, you share that, and they'll share what they have. That is a beautiful thing about some of these communities. And I watched Papa give away a lot of stuff. He'd loan equipment. He would borrow equipment, which something that he said you're better off not doing, because if you break it, ugh, and my dad always said that too. But he would go fix things for them, like that man I just talked about. Help people, if their cow was out, somebody would call. Everybody knew their cow, he would go and help them fix the fence. He would either do the work for them or give the tools to do the work. They would help each other, bail hay, oh, getting hay in, that was something, especially when weather was imminent and hey, we gotta help, raise a barn. They help each other. Even when money or time was tight. Yeah. I remember one time he was gonna give something away, and I didn't know that. The big plan. But I said, don't we need this? Aren't we going to need this? And he said, Probably. Then why are you giving it away? Because someday we're going to need something. And they'll remember it. Now, this sounds like the Godfather or prison or something like that. No. That man, and I found out later he didn't use it very often. And that man needed this. He didn't have one. He's going to use it a lot more often. And he said, I know where it is. If I need to borrow it, I'll borrow it. Borrow your own tool? Why? He needs it more than me. Generosity. That's not measured by how much you have. It's measured by how willing you are to share what you do have. And it, I'm not going to go all Sunday school on you, but you can't outgive. Sometimes the richest people I've ever known, they didn't have a lot of material things. But the poorest people with wisdom and the right kind of heart, that's the real wealth. They sleep good at night. They don't worry. And I learned that. I learned that from my mom as well. But I remember Papo in those special situations. And then the last lesson I'll share with you that I thought of there's hundreds. It's about beavers. I think of beavers because we used to have some fun with the beavers. I know what you're thinking, and no, these are really beavers. But every farm's got them. Either that, or maybe you got a weasel or coyote killing your chickens, raccoons or groundhogs, whatever you've got. There's something. Every year, something shows up that was not invited. Or something starts chewing or digging or stealing or destroying. You can't spend your whole life being mad at them. No. They're just, beavers are just doing what beavers do. They build a dam and it floods your field, causes problems. Yeah. Your job is not to complain, your job is to solve that situation or that problem. Popo didn't waste energy asking, why is this happening? I remember one time a weasel got into the hen house and killed all the chickens. No, he didn't ask why it was happening. It's just what are you going to do about it? I've got an O talk coming up in a few days. Okay, now what? Popo didn't dwell on it. He may warn somebody, hey, watch out. Weasel got all my chickens. He didn't do it to complain. He did that to warn somebody. And then the beavers. You're going to have them. It could be an unexpected bill. It could be difficult people you're forced to be around. Maybe a health scare, a divorce, setback in business, some kind of disappointment. Yeah, we didn't ask for this. All of us get them. But it's not, why is this happening to me? It's all right, what am I going to do about it? Life's not measured by whether trouble comes or not, it's measured by how quickly we stop staring at the damage and start repairing the fence. Yeah. So many stories. And that one was one that's in the last few years, it's going to happen. And a lot of times it's several things at once. So it's not why. While you're doing the next thing, maybe you'll be enlightened a little. I don't know. Everybody's got beavers. The thing is, everyday life is the best teacher that I could. I've got a college degree. I'm not that smart. I could my I can prove it on paper that I'm educated. I know a lot of educated people, dumb as rock. But life is the best, everyday life is the best teacher. Papa never went to leadership conferences. He didn't, but he taught them. He taught them every day. He never studied psychology. Wow, he could read people. Yeah. I don't think he ever read a self-help book. I can't imagine that. Yet everyone around him was helped by him. Why? It's because life keeps teaching. If we pay attention. Yep. So several things. Why does life teach us so well and lessons that if we're paying attention we could learn them? Lessons learned through experience last a lot longer than a PowerPoint or a lecture. You felt that one. That's experience, recall, and application. Ordinary moments, they remove your defenses too. Wisdom, when you're not, when you're not being preached to or at and you're just experiencing, wisdom kind of sneaks in you. It does. And it's great. Also, nature teaches timeless principles that don't change with trends. I could go back to the farm right now. And some things are exactly the same. Some things are more mature. Those pecans, they're still coming out every year. The creek is still in the same spot. It's consistent. Where? Big things, business trends, technology, it's all changing. But the old things are still surviving. Real problems produce practical answers. Usually the simplest is the best. Usually the hardest is the right one. Those are principles that still play today. And every single day offers another opportunity to be a little wiser than yesterday. What an opportunity. So how do you find them? How do you just my my grandfather has he passed decades ago, and these lessons I learned more than 50 years ago. All the way to 61 years ago, I can tell you that. And they're still true. So how do you find them? I just thought of some of these things. Where are they? They're everywhere. Some of the things you can do, you can uncover, but just ask why instead of what? Why do you think this happened? How do you why do you think blah blah blah? Not when something happens to you. I'm not going back on what I said other earlier, but your curiosity is to ask about it. Like I asked about the mule, and I asked about lending tools, and I asked about all of these things. I was, I wanted to know. Didn't they were lessons? I wanted to know more about it. The big thing is, Popo didn't talk a lot. And when I was around him, I probably talked more than most people asking questions. But one way to find these lessons in your everyday life is listen more than you speak. Especially to older people. Some of the best times in my life has been sitting around listening to older people tell stories, what they laugh about, what the lessons they've learned, what's important to them. It's important. And there are lessons in all of that. One thing, especially lately, watch nature. It's been solving problems longer than anybody we know. And it finds a way. Everything from birds, my goodness, the birds or the just the animals running around. What are they doing? Watch before a storm, watch before a snowstorm. Look how busy the squirrels are. Look how everybody is busy doing something and they're preparing based on nature. Yeah. Another thing, at the end of the day, just ask, what was life trying to teach me today? What did I learn today? What's something new? What's a different way to look at something? What did I see for the hundredth time? But today it was a little bit different.

unknown 30:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:39

And I think one of the biggest things, and I appreciate the kind words when people tell me this, but I think it's important to share your stories because the lesson becomes stronger when someone else learns from it too. I can tell the story about cats in the rafters and what I learned. I have heard so many lessons from that story that when someone heard it, they got something else out of it. Share your stories. People are listening and they need to hear it. So when you look back, I don't remember every acre Papo planted. I don't remember how many tobacco sticks he used. You get them, you put them, you hang them, it's oh, it's so much. It's a great process. I couldn't tell you what the last year the creek flooded because of a beaver dam. Or how many bushels of corn the corn crib would hold. I don't remember any of that. But I remember his words and his reactions. Because they weren't really about farming. They were about faith and patience, people, and perspective. It's about living with your boots and your hands in the dirt. And being grounded. We have podcasts. We have AI. Oh, what would Papa think about AI? He wouldn't trust it, I'll tell you that. He had the farmer's almanac. But we got leadership books, online courses. Experts are everywhere. Experts, my ass. And they're all valuable. Oh, they're valuable, great tools. But don't overlook the wisdom of sitting on a front porch somewhere and just listening. Don't dismiss that person who's still fixing a tractor or grandma, mama canning tomatoes. You learn while you do it. Don't underestimate these people who are doing menial things. It could be a mechanic or a waitress or truck driver, Uber driver, the janitor at your school, or that neighbor who he's lived through things Google can't even begin to explain. Because life whispers often the lessons you need to hear. Doesn't shout them always. The best lesson rarely is taught in a classroom. That's why you're planting or raking or fixing something. Maybe mending a fence or sharing a meal, helping a neighbor out. I know this seems foreign. It's not. We can use it to today's vernacular. You can still do all of these things. Yeah. Or maybe it's standing next to an old farmer who just simply says, sometimes you got to give the seed a chance to grow. Maybe that's exactly what somebody in your or my life needs today. Or maybe it's what I need to hear about some things going on in my life. Sometimes you got to give a seed a chance to grow. All right. I get very nostalgic on this. And when I talk about recall and application, here's five more that hit me out of nowhere recently and it brought it back. And actually, while I've been talking, I thought of a couple more. So I'll save that. I'll save those for another time. But hit me up. Tell me what you think. Give me stories. Please give me some stories about your grandma or grandpa or favorite uncle or whoever that taught you a ton. I would love to hear them because they're applicable today. We're so sophisticated. Everybody's got beavers, man. And some have mean old mules, but they get the job done. All right. Hit me up, david at otalks.com or davidotaks.com, or just go to the website. We got all sorts of stuff on there. Shows you how to get a hold of me. Let me know. Let me know what you think. I appreciate it. Thanks for hanging out. Thanks for hanging on. But most of all, thanks for O Talking with Dave. Giddy up.