This Competent Life

My neighbor Bill was showing me his most recent battle wounds, cuts and scrapes up and down both arms and an inch-long set of stitches buried in his full head of hair. “Oh, and I also broke a couple of ribs,” he said. I reminded him of the obvious, that he was very lucky, that rolling off a roof and falling eight feet onto concrete could have ended up a whole lot worse. He agreed, but quickly added, “I only lacked replacing one more sheet of tin and the ridge cap, and would have been finished reroofing the barn. Now my wife won’t let me up on the roof anymore.” That Bill is 88 is only part of this story. The bigger picture involves basic competencies we exercise in our lives.

I had been visiting to inspect the family’s home generator. Also called a standby or whole-house, it differs from a portable gas generator in that it kicks on automatically when the power goes out and it runs on propane. Our farm already has a large and a small gas version that we infrequently haul out (typically during an ice storm), and we were considering an upgrade. After a couple of weeks of discussing the costs vs. convenience, we decided to stick with what we had. But I was left thinking of my elderly neighbor, not so much about his serious fall, but that he had been up on a roof in the first place. That at 88 years of age he was recovering his barn with new tin.

Bill is a man who had recently, and the evidence was all around, dropped a half dozen oaks in his woodlot. As we stood chatting at the tail end of our visit, he asked if I could use any wood for our stove. A large pile of expertly split logs was stacked neatly near one of the outbuildings. Surely he needed it himself, I said? No, he and his wife don’t use the fireplace or have a wood stove. “I just like to have it on hand to give to the less fortunate.”

Now, I seriously doubt Bill thought of me as being in that category. He was simply trying to repay with kindness my occasional welfare calls and drop-bys. Again, the story is not about his toppling off the roof or offering me free firewood, though both are instructive — one, as regards safety, the other, for its generous acts of love and charity. What I took away from my visit with this neighbor is his general level of competence.

I am somewhat fortunate in that being a farmer forces me to exercise the opportunity to build competency in a variety of skills — basic repairs on all manner of small engines and equipment, decisions on infrastructure, medical treatments of livestock — on a daily basis. Calling in the professionals for most or all of these areas would, for this small farm anyway, be tantamount to filing for bankruptcy.

Cost aside, the small acts of doing for oneself that we learn and build on throughout our lives add up. They become, in that final accounting, one measure of a full life. I would maintain that developing manual and intellectual competencies (and expertly dropping a massive oak tree requires both) brings a satisfaction and a fulfillment that simply being a passive consumer never can. To arrive at age 88 able to say that you are an expert in the areas of calling (or of pointing and clicking) and ordering a service or product is to own a certain cowardice that should embarrass in its dependence. Better to be like my neighbor, to risk the metaphorical odd roll off your roof in the pursuit of the competent life.

Reading this past week: A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush (E. Newby), The Gastronomic Me (MFK Fisher), and Slojd in Wood (J. Sundqvist).

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3 thoughts on “This Competent Life

  1. Excellent post Brian. Your neighbour Bill reminded me of this quote, a condition I aspire to:

    A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyse a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

    — Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love

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