Keep The Leaves Moving Forward

I’d like to share a story with you that has become one of the cornerstones of my life. I tell it to whomever will listen and it never fails to disappoint. It’s one of those experiences you never see coming and in hindsight, you never forget.

In the fall of 2006, I was gearing up for what looked to be a long season of yard work. The weather had been dry and I had 40 mature trees in my yard, all waiting to shed their leaves. It’s funny how the reality of these things doesn’t occur to you before you buy the house. I saw those trees and fell in love with them. It didn’t cross my mind in July, that three months later they’d blanket my yard three inches (8 cm) deep. Nevertheless, as a hopeless purveyor of perfection, I was armed with a garage full of power tools to get the job done… FAST.

The day had come. Most of the leaves had fallen and there was no longer any guarantee the wind would blow them into the gully across the street. So one sunny afternoon, I dragged myself away from the computer to begin the enormous task of clearing the yard. I got the leaf-blower out, picked a strategic starting point and then proceeded to clear a beautiful 5′ wide path through the middle of the front yard. I turned around to admire my work.

“Let’s see…” I thought to myself, “…that took about 30 seconds…”

I did the math.

“Ah! This should take about 15 minutes!”

In that moment I suddenly understood why men love power tools. But I assure you, that was not the magnificent ah-ha moment of which I write.

I admired the beautiful green grass I had revealed with my super-perfect power tool strategy and then prepared to clear the next 5′ strip on my return trip. Off we go vroom vroom vroom. And it was in *that* moment that I realized, Houston, we have a problem.

Just like my inability to foresee the work of owning 40 trees, I also failed to see that when you double-back with a leaf-blower, you’re going to blow half the leaves back into the beautiful clear path you made on the first pass. I was surprised and furious!

I laugh as I write this now. My perception of the situation and my reactions to it, at that time, were entirely fueled by my need for effortless, efficient perfection. There was no room for anything less and therefore my reactions were surprisingly irrational.

I stood there looking back at my second pass. While I should have had two beautifully cleared paths, I only had one! I decided to recalculate the math.

“Okay… hum… 5(x-2)⁴*(80(n-3)⁵)/0″

The math wasn’t adding-up. I decided to wing-it to see what happened. I cleared another path, and another, and another. I cleared ten paths and then realized all I was doing was blowing the leaves around like the wind! I’m sure the neighbors were chuckling. In my dismay and frustration, I decided to take a break.

While sipping lemonade, I contemplated the errors of my calculations and my strategy. What good is a leaf-blower if it blows the leaves all over the area you just cleared? (still laughing) I lamented the time that had passed and the fact that I was unable to determine how much longer this process would keep me from the computer. I went back out to try again.

This activity went on for a few days. I managed to create a few piles, but I’m certain I doubled my work with my inefficient methods. I resigned myself to the fact that I likely would not find any secret to the leaf-blower and that, perhaps, some things in life were just meant to be tedious and frustrating! I was of course, resisting the rake, who, alone and lonely, sat by the side of the house jumping and yelling, “Pick me! Pick me!”

But something happened on the fourth day… I don’t recall now if it was the tedium or the coping mechanism I chose, but my mind finally entertained the thought, that the point was not to blow a perfect row each time you crossed the yard, but to simply keep the leaves moving forward.

“Well!” I thought to myself, “…isn’t that an interesting idea… let me contemplate this for a minute… Is there any math we need to do here? Hum… no.”

I continued with the leaves, but now I worked with them in a different way. I stopped trying to blow nice rows. I stopped caring whether the second row covered half of the first one. I stopped caring about any kind of methodical progression at all. I simply kept the leaves moving forward.

“OH! Oh oh oh oh oh!” I proclaimed in my head!

I cannot describe the flood of “DUH” that rushed out of my system in that moment. This seemingly tiny bit of wisdom created a brilliant spark of light. It illuminated a lifetime of darkness that perfection and effortlessness and efficiency had created in my mind. My definitions of those concepts limited what I believed were possible actions, making it impossible for me to see that simply getting behind the pile and blowing the leaves forward, regardless whether they blew here or there, was more efficient.

Now I can imagine some of you are thinking, “Well isn’t that kind of obvious?” Indeed, it probably is to some. But there are many who hold very fixed perspectives about how things (should) operate. We work in jobs that create systems that operate perfectly and under perfectly controlled circumstances. We create perfection in order to breed effortlessness and efficiency and then we take this unrealistic perception back home and forget it’s not “real”. Nature does not operate with such limitation. Life is not designed to be effortless or efficient.

Now you might think the only wisdom I obtained that fall day was to get behind something and simply keep moving forward. But wait, there’s more. As I completed the yard that fourth day, I did so without the nagging thought of how I was going to figure it out tomorrow. I no longer felt I was plagued by some mysterious efficiency that eluded me. The most efficient method for this task was simply to keep everything moving forward. This very thought freed me to not only enjoy the task more, but to leave it behind once I was done for the day. Tomorrow, we’ll move more of it forward again and I’ll just be that much farther along.

For the next few days, as I continued to manage leaves, I contemplated this new wisdom. I looked back on the last 20 years of my life and wondered how much time and energy I had wasted struggling and fighting to complete all the tasks that laid before me. No matter what I had been doing, every time the figurative leaves blew into my figurative perfect first row, I’d shrug and grow to hate all the stuff I had to do. I realized then, that it was my perception of the way things had to be, that ultimately created this struggle and frustration. I wanted things to get done right the first time, efficiently, never repeating anything twice – SNAP SNAP SNAP – complete. But in reality, this just doesn’t happen. In reality, some of the leaves will always blow back into the row you just cleared. You can fight that for the rest of your life, or you can hold a new perception that the efficient way for most of life’s tasks, is to simply get behind an effort and keep things moving foward.

I have never forgotten those four days blowing leaves in the yard. That experience gave me one of the greatest gifts I’ve ever received. I didn’t have to read a book by a popular author. I didn’t have to attend a class. I simply participated, fully, in my own life, exerting effort, inefficiently.

Do you have a story like this from your own life? Consider sharing it here at Holistic Ground!

Copyright © 2010 Suzanne Ahjira. All Rights Reserved.