It’s hard to believe
that is has been six years since I wrote this as my wife, Joan, decorated our
Christmas tree. As she decorated I began
getting sentimental and philosophical at the same time. I hope you enjoy my lessons:
My daughter, Kerri, and I had a tradition of cutting down
the annual Christmas tree. As I fondly thought about it, I decided that the
annual trek to the Christmas tree farm had lessons that we could all learn
from.
1.
Don’t settle for the first good-looking tree. Kerri was
always eager to get the tree selection done quickly in order to get home and
start the decorating, not realizing that the secret to a great Christmas tree
begins with the selection. A well-decorated Charlie Brown tree is still a
Charlie Brown tree. Short-cutting the selection process gets people in trouble
their whole life. Selecting the first guy that shows a girl a little attention
is a sure-fire way to end in divorce court. A management textbook calls it
“satisficing” – selecting the first solution that meets the minimum criteria
instead of going for the best. Take your time and wait for the best.
2.
A big tree in the outdoors is a gargantuan tree in
one’s living room. I was guilty of this more times than I’d like to admit. The
tree needs to be selected in reference to the size of the room it is going in –
not the room in which it currently sits. Reference is everything. Compared to
Bill Gates, I’m a pauper. Compared to most of the people in the world, I’m Bill
Gates. Never lose perspective.
3.
It is cold, windy (sometimes raining) and generally
miserable cutting down a tree, but it is worth it. Christmas tree cutting is a
wintertime activity and winter in Indiana
can be miserable. Rarely has it been a nice day when we cut down a tree. But when the time came for the next tree
cutting, I forgot the miserable weather we endured the prior year, eager again
to beat the elements in the quest for the ideal Christmas tree. Anything and
everything in life worth having is a struggle to achieve. The easy-to-obtain things in life
and the mundane are easily forgotten.
4.
The simple things in life are usually the
most memorable. This seems contradictory to the last lesson, doesn’t
it? Not really. Simple and easy are different. When you think about the act of
going to a Christmas tree farm and cutting down a tree, it is a pretty simple
task and yet for us it brings back the best of memories. This is different than
standing in line for hours for the “must have gift”. It’s not complicated, nor
hard to plan. It is just the simple act of spending time with a child and
creating a Christmas tradition that lives on in our memories.
5.
Don’t forget the saw. Failing to plan is planning to
fail. Simple does not mean it requires no forethought. A few minutes of
planning saves the long trip back to get the saw.
6.
Natural trees aren’t perfect and perfect
trees aren’t real. Natural trees smell good and look good, but they do
not look perfect. If you want perfection you want artificial. That’s the way it
is with people. The prefect people you see on the screen aren’t real and the
real people in your life aren’t perfect.
Bill Burton, Ph.D.
Christmas, 2010
Bill,
ReplyDeleteThank you for the sharing the valuable life lessons. When reading the last entry: NATURAL TREES AREN'T PERFECT AND PERFECT TREES AREN'T REAL. I recalled the words from the child's story, The Velveteen Rabbit, written by Margery Williams. A section about what it means to be REAL follows:
Christmas Morning
For a long time he lived in the toy cupboard or on the nursery floor, and no one thought very much about him. He was naturally shy, and being only made of velveteen, some of the more expensive toys quite snubbed him. The mechanical toys were very superior, and looked down upon every one else; they were full of modern ideas, and pretended they were real. The model boat, who had lived through two seasons and lost most of his paint, caught the tone from them and never missed an opportunity of referring to his rigging in technical terms. The Rabbit could not claim to be a model of anything, for he didn't know that real rabbits existed; he thought they were all stuffed with sawdust like himself, and he understood that sawdust was quite out-of-date and should never be mentioned in modern circles. Even Timothy, the jointed wooden lion, who was made by the disabled soldiers, and should have had broader views, put on airs and pretended he was connected with Government. Between them all, the poor little Rabbit was made to feel himself very insignificant and commonplace, and the only person who was kind to him at all was the Skin Horse.
The Skin Horse had lived longer in the nursery than any of the others. He was so old that his brown coat was bald in patches and showed the seams underneath, and most of the hairs in his tail had been pulled out to string bead necklaces. He was wise, for he had seen a long succession of mechanical toys arrive to boast and swagger, and by-and-by break their mainsprings and pass away, and he knew that they were only toys, and would never turn into anything else. For nursery magic is very strange and wonderful, and only those playthings that are old and wise and experienced like the Skin Horse understand all about it.
"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"
"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."
"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.
"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When
you are Real you don't mind being hurt."
"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"
"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."
"I suppose you are real?" said the Rabbit. And then he wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive.
But the Skin Horse only smiled.
Retrieved from https://archive.org/stream/thevelveteenrabb11757gut/11757.txt
Well said. Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDelete"The simple things in life are usually the most memorable." This is so true. We remember a kids sports game, a certain smell, a taste; something so simple can trigger so many memories.
ReplyDeleteYour words, and your jouney to being a victor shall be a great story. I have shared your story to this point with many friends and family, the prayers are going up and will continue to do so.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for your prayers, Dustin. It has been so exciting to see God's people, many of whom do not know me well, come together to support us during this most difficult time in our lives.
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