I’m so friggin’ positive some days I should have been a farmer. I haven’t done an extensive survey, but the few producers I have talked to in recent weeks on the phone or met at farm shows or producer meetings, are all positively gearing up for the 2022 growing season.
Yes, there was disappointment and frustration for many that the dry conditions stretching into drought during the past growing season produced from average to extremely poor results. But I believe it was soon followed by an attitude that 2022 brings a new growing season and an opportunity to be a pretty good year. As bad as 2021 was, I talked to a few producers who said they had already come through worst years due perhaps to another drought, or too much rain, hail, or snow, or some combination of weather events.
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It might seem like a backwards way of looking at things, but some of the world events that wrapped up 2021 have certainly reminded me of the need to be a very grateful person. My philosophy may be feeding off of someone else’s grief, but some days I just need to pay attention to all the good things in my day.
Last fall, I saw those desperate families, thousands of people, in Afghanistan begging and even clinging to the undercarriage of taxiing airplanes, all to get away from a violent, extremist regime that had taken control of their country. And I thought other than some slick attitudes and policies among politicians here in Canada that I may not fully agree with, what do I have to complain about at home? Yes, there can even be daily isolated violent events in some parts of Calgary, but I am not waking up each day fearing for the life of myself or my family. And for that I need to be truly grateful.
Similarly, and not long after the Afghanistan reports, there were other clips on the nightly news, for a while at least, of thousands of refugees — Iraqis, Syrians and Yemenis — lined up in tent and tarp camps along the razor wire-protected border with Belarus, as they sought refuge from war and poverty in the Middle East, Africa, Asia and beyond.
Again, desperate families with absolutely nothing just looking for some safe place. I couldn’t imagine being in a situation like that with my own family, cold and hungry in a barren no man’s land, where no country wants you. Perhaps the only real issue I had that day, here in Calgary, was not understanding the logic of anti-vaxxers protesting in front of city hall. And for that I am truly grateful.
And then closer to home in late November into early December, it was hard to believe the TV images of the extent of flooding from the B.C. interior through to the West Coast.
Merrit under water, major highways washed out, hundreds of farms in the Lower Mainland flooded to the rooftops. There were probably some of those dairy and hog operations I had visited on warm summer days over the years. It was just unbelievable that there could be so much water and the destruction it left behind.
There were estimates that about 700,000 farm animals were lost — most of that was poultry — including an estimated 12,000 hogs and 420 dairy cows. Obviously, a huge economic cost, but the loss and cleanup all has to take a tremendous human emotional toll. My biggest complaint is that during the summer I had to run the sprinkler more than I wanted to keep the grass green in my yard. And for that I am truly grateful.
And then, just in the days before I wrote this column, again it was hard to believe the unprecedented extent of destruction caused by nearly three dozen tornados that ripped through six U.S. states — Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri, Mississippi and Tennessee — killing about 100 people or more and destroying whole communities. There was a continuous path of destruction greater than the distance between Calgary and Edmonton.
I would watch news interviews with these bewildered and tearful people standing in the debris of what used to be their homes thinking I can’t even imagine that in my neighbourhood at any stage, but, particularly at this stage of my life, where does a person start to rebuild when there is absolutely nothing left? It was indeed another moment to be extremely grateful.
I don’t mean this column to be a downer by revisiting just a sample of all the misery that has happened in parts of the world in recent weeks, but it is just a reminder to me that I can bitch and complain and be full of self pity about dozens of so-called “first world problems” almost on a daily basis.
It doesn’t mean there aren’t real and valid problems, frustrations, challenges, disappointments and, yes, even grief that I will have to deal with, but I think the message is to keep it in perspective.
One quote I read somewhere was “for some reason God (the Creator or a higher power) has given some of us a more difficult road to trudge than others.” I wish those people didn’t have to go through the suffering they do and hopefully at some point they find relief. If there is any value in the misery is that it reminds me to be grateful for where I live and for what I have and try to carry that attitude of gratitude into 2022 on a daily basis.
