One of the tasks that the students here at Legacy Institute have to do is spend every morning of the “work week” doing work at one of the various gardens. Usually I am one of those indoors people who prefers to dwell in tents, but with some encouragement I have tried to make it at least an occasional habit to go to the farm even though I certainly do not have to do so. This morning I chose to go to the farm, and I was able to help out with the hoeing work in one of our gardens with some of the students, who seemed a bit amused about me helping out. One of the students loaned me a straw hat to keep out the sun, which I appreciated.

Today the work was planting pumpkins in one garden and preparing an outhouse in the other garden, which is a short walk away. It is surprising how much more fun farm work can be when one is around others, including a four year old boy who just wants to help out with all of the big people. As someone who pays close attention to others, I was able to blend in pretty well despite never having planted pumpkins before. The students are very observant, sometimes mistaking my daydreaming and pondering ways for being exhausted. The work was tiring, but it was not too bad, giving as much energy as it took away.

It is not too surprising to me that such work is required of the students. Life is full of reminders that success requires hard work. I rather jokingly call some of this work buffalo work, because it is the sort of work that requires consistent slogging and where the fruits and results of such work are not immediately obvious. If we understand the whole purpose of the work, then we can see many times that jobs have a part of a larger whole, and sometimes work must be done that is not very pleasant but is still necessary. And when that is the case, we just have to do it no matter how little we may enjoy it. Hopefully we can fill most of our time with what is enjoyable and worthwhile, but that is not always the case, so we cannot let that deter us from being responsible anyway.

It is striking to me how much time I spend dealing with managing the work of other people. I must say, this is not something that I have had a great deal of practice, but I suppose that getting practice in supervising is definitely a good thing considering my educational and vocational interests in management. You have to start somewhere, right? The tasks of motivation and management are fundamentally similar no matter who one is managing, or which tasks. The differences are in degree rather than in kind. Much work is buffalo work, or fun, depending on factors outside of the task itself, like the enjoyment and respect one gets from it, the ability one has to spend time with others, and other factors. It is little wonder, therefore that work is a task of such subtlety and art, and why we spend so much time trying to get it right.