REGIONAL VIEWPOINT: Reflecting on what we’ll leave behind

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This article was published 29/08/2023 (1169 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

I want to believe I matter — that what I do, matters. That if I am not there, I will be missed.

You can call it a character flaw, if you like: in any silence, I feel compelled to speak; when the group doesn’t know what to do, I am compelled to act; when everyone else is sitting quietly and patiently, the waiting is torture for me.

So, I want to teach those students something that they would not learn from someone else.

As a parent, I want to help my kids, so they will have an easier or better life than I did.

As an activist, I want to believe that what I do makes a difference in the lives of other people.

As a writer, I trust that what I write has an audience, and that my work changes what readers think about a subject or about themselves.

Of course, underlying all these actions is the uneasy feeling that somehow they don’t really matter — or even worse, that I don’t.

Perhaps it is that first breath of fall in the air that makes me think like this. Fall is my favourite season of the year. Unfortunately, it is also a reminder that the summer has dodged past me, once again, leaving undone most of what I had spent the winter planning to do.

Or perhaps it is the perpetual grind of my life as precarious (contract) university faculty, where one term is barely finished before the next term starts, and I am simply tired.

But whatever the reason, that first autumn chill reminds me to step back from what I do and — however briefly — to consider instead who I am.

Going outside and walking through my overgrown yard in the fall is always a reminder of the importance of perspective. Where I see all the things left undone, nature has instead seized the opportunity to just grow. I have joked before that this small patch of land, with its little scrub oak bush, is a life sanctuary — but the closer I look, the more life I see.

Away from the monoculture of the lawnmower, there is amazing abundance, of all kinds. Biodiversity is rarely the result of human intention; it’s what happens when humans simply get out of the way of Nature.

There are unusual bushes I have never seen before, laden with berries, hidden away underneath others. I am used to finding wild plums, and being surprised by the high bush cranberries that still survive along the unkempt brush line, but this year, I have found many other similar volunteers, spontaneously thriving because of my inattention.

Not having the time to weed-whack the edges of the woods, or around the oak trees, led to discovering this is where the wild prairie rose thrives. The dead trees that should have been cut down have now fallen, instead — and are hollowed out by insects and woodpeckers, for whom is it is both a home and source of food.

Everywhere my “must do” brain looks and is overwhelmed by jobs not completed, my “let it be” soul discovers layers of diversity and complexity that I would only have screwed up, had I done half of what I had intended.

In all of this, there is a life lesson for me that somehow always needs to be repeated every fall:

It’s not what I have taught my students, but what they have learned, perhaps despite my teaching.

It’s not what I have done for my kids, but what they have learned to do for themselves, perhaps despite my efforts.

It’s not what I have accomplished, as an activist, but what other people have decided to do (or not do) because of my example.

And it’s not whether anyone today reads what I wrote (including this!), but that in the act of my writing, thoughts are given words and therefore may come to life wherever and whenever they are needed.

You could say we are all works in progress, and that would be true. But as I marvel this fall at “the force that through the green fuse drives the flower” (in Dylan Thomas’ words), I am reminded that, whatever we accomplish, we are also all possibilities unfolding — by the intention of Creator — in time and space.

As the season changes, and the cold winds blow, we are called to be at peace with who and where we are, right now.

That is what matters, most of all, as the wild geese fly.

» Peter Denton writes from his home in rural Manitoba. This column previously appeared in the Winnipeg Free Press.