Life is tough and will “trim” you to make you better, faster, stronger, smarter
The Trick is to keep your Dreams and Passions alive while this happens
Wine vines must be trimmed for a bountiful harvest of grapes
Today we are going to connect a beautiful winery tour I went on in Kelowna to a very funny British comedy movie about Golf to a heart-warming kids Disney movie to our current rather terrifying ecological and social challenges. Sound like a bit of a stretch? Of course it is! But stretching your abilities, like the mountain climbers I saw scaling a near vertical cliff yesterday, is what makes life worth living.
At yesterday’s wine tour in Kelowna we were given two Pino Noir wines to taste. Both were grown on the same hill, at the same time, of the same grape, processed the same way. And yet they tasted VERY different. The colours were different. The smell was different. The taste was different? How could that be? Well, the lighter coloured wine had vines that grew lower on the slopes of the hill which was heavy, clay soils. Lots of nutrients, lots of water, and thus shallower roots and larger grapes. It was easy for those vines to grow and thrive. The better tasting, richer in colour and aroma wine, was grown higher up on the same hill. But there, because of the impact of a glacier from the Ice Ages, the soils are sandier and rockier. The vines had to grow its roots deeper to get enough water and minerals to thrive. The result is smaller, but better tasting, grapes.
Tasting room, Cedar Creek Estate Winery, Kelowna
What’s the message of this little vignette? We all want life to be easy, but thankfully the forces of life, to keep us alive and healthy, don’t let that happen. It takes a bit of sandy, rocky soil to make better wine. Similarly it takes a bit [not too much!] of stress, a few challenges, a couple of bullies, a failure or two, to transform is into a mature adult who is able to realistically face life. The hard part is to keep yours dreams are alive, more on that later when we discuss the magic of golf.
Every branch that bears fruit Life prunes to make it bear more fruit.
Ancient religions know this that we need to be “trimmed” to become the best that we can be. For example, the quote above from the Gospel of John in the New Testament there is a parable about how the trimming of wine vines, which is necessary for a good harvest of grapes, is similar to the “trimming” that life does to each of us. [I replaced God with Life] The pain is real, but hopefully of short duration, but the benefits and long lasting and incredible life enriching.
Enough of grapes, what about golf? Well, a tough life is all very philosophically appealing but in the real world all this “trimming” can really destroy people when they give up in despair and see that life is only suffering and no joy and that dreams and passions are crushed by the unrelenting forces that treat you like an expendable pawn in a brutal game of chess. There has to be some counterforce to all this “tough love” – and there is!
Maurice Flitcroft at the British Open 1976
The Phantom of the Open is a based upon the true story of Maurice Flitcroft, who taught himself to play golf at 46 on the ocean beaches where he lived on the Irish Sea and entered the British Open the next year – earning the worst score of any player in a major competition ever. Amazingly, he entered twice more under pseudonyms. Maurice’s dreams did not make his life, or the life of his family, any easier – quite the opposite. However, his dreams and passions, shared with his wife, transformed all their lives from one of mere existing to experiencing a vibrant life with meaning. Of course to live life out of the mainstream can also help inspire those around you and that it exactly what happens in the movie. I don’t want to tell you more because I hope that you will now be curious enough to watch the movie on Netflix.
WALL-E the robot cleaning up our mess
Not convinced? Still want and easy, a safe, life? Well, rather than being bored listening to me try watching the kids movie WALL-E, the story of a robot who has been left of Earth to clean up all the garbage and pollution humans have created while the humans travel around in space on an AI controlled spaceship that serves their every needs. One of the themes of the movie is that the humans on the spaceship, because they have no stress and no challenges, become fat, lazy and very stupid. I know it’s only a kids movie, but the script writers really understood the human condition when they wrote this script.
With no challenge the people in the Spaceship become fat, lazy and very stupid
So what can you do? Embrace life when it trims you. I am not saying enjoy pain, I am no masochist, but accept it as a life affirming step in becoming a better you. Sure, climate change is a challenge – but we can beat it if we work together. Sure, toxic chemicals are killing us but we can replace them with alternatives. Sure, famines are likely as underground aquifers are exhausted, but we have the know how to grow food with less water. Sure, political polarization is accelerating and social cohesion is disintegrating, but we once we face reality we can, and will, like in WWII, cooperate and realize we are all on the same side. So, don’t run away from a challenge, face it, and if you fail, that is OK – you lived, you really lived. Keep your dreams and passions alive. Don’t live in your artificial fake cocoon of safety like the humans in the AI controlled spaceship pictured in WALL-E. Instead live as Mary Oliver does in the poem that follows. Here is my final bit of advice from the life affirming poet Mary Oliver, an excerpt from “When Death Comes”.
When it’s over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.
Be trimmed and dream so that you can bear lots of good fruit
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