Wednesday Wisdom: Farnsworth's First Law of Life, Leadership, and Pyramids

FARNSWORTH'S FIRST LAW OF LIFE, LEADERSHIP, AND PYRAMIDS:

Pyramids and other legacies are built by farmers, not by nomads.

 
 

      

I've always been fascinated by pyramids. I have made several trips to Central America to explore Mayan pyramids, where I stand in awe of what those ancients constructed. Going to Egypt is still on my bucket list.  

Pyramids are the ultimate expression of a legacy in stone. Centuries later, as we gaze in wonder upon their slopes or scale their heights, we want to know their builders' stories and understand how they created such magnificent structures.  

Pyramids can teach us many lessons about how to leave a legacy. Here's one we often overlook: Pyramid builders were not nomads or hunter-gatherers who roamed from place to place. Pyramids were built by farmers who had learned to feed and sustain populations sufficiently large to erect such enormous edifices.    

Before they constructed pyramids, those ancient builders first had to feed their people. They had to master the decidedly un-glamorous work of plowing, planting, irrigating, weeding, cultivating, protecting, and harvesting their fields, season after season. They patiently tended and improved their flocks, year after year. A long-term commitment to agriculture was a prerequisite to successful pyramid building. Without crops and herds, there were no pyramids.

Ironically, it is likely that the pyramid builders' most significant endowment to the world was not in the realm of stone masonry but in their accomplishments in the fields of agriculture and animal husbandry. Those massive pyramids certainly draw more attention, but the capacity to sustainably feed growing populations has had far more impact in the long run.

 

Those pyramid builders understood and practiced what Stephen R. Covey called "the law of the harvest." "All lasting results are produced in a sequence, are governed by principles, and are grown from the inside out." Before you reap, you must sow, you must water, you must weed, and you must cultivate. There are no shortcuts.

I learned those lessons first-hand as a boy growing up on a small family farm in Fruitland, New Mexico. When I say "small," I'm referring to the farm, not the family. The family was large, with a father, a mother, and 13 children. Feeding such a large "population" was a constant challenge for my parents.

 

Besides growing alfalfa and corn for our animals, our family also raised much of what we ate. In addition to milk from our dairy herd, we grew fruit trees and raised chickens, pigs, and beef cattle. Above all, our spacious garden was the heart of our self-sufficiency.  

For us children the garden represented endless hours of back-breaking effort: plowing, fertilizing, planting, hoeing, irrigating, thinning, picking, washing, canning. Notwithstanding our grumbling and resistance, our parents did not flinch or waver. They understood that our family needed the food and, more importantly, that we children needed to learn how to labor until the job was done, every day, all summer long.

It required hard work, patience, tenacity, and the wisdom of many years' experience raising vegetables. It required hoeing to the end of the row. It required steady, persistent attention, week after week, throughout the long growing season. There were no shortcuts.  

While many of us children detested every minute we spent in it, that garden sustained us physically while it also provided rich and rewarding life-lessons that would continue to bless us and our children and our children's children for decades to come.

When it comes to legacies, our parents left no monuments of stone. They did, however, raise children who were resilient, dependable, and perseverant. They built in us a sense of self-reliance and interdependence. They forged us into a family that loved each other and who knew how to face life's most difficult challenges and come out ahead. Our parents' true legacy was the character they developed in their children.  

The era of leaving legacies of pyramids is long over. I agree with Pericles, who said that what truly matters "is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others." In the modern world, our most important legacies will be the impact we have on the people we care about.  

Creating a significant and enduring legacy that is "woven into the lives of others" requires a long-term commitment to our most important associations. It requires that we master the decidedly un-glamorous work of planting, weeding, irrigating, and cultivating the relationships that matter to us most. It requires serving and shepherding our personal flock with love and patience and kindness.

When it comes to farming and legacy building, the law of the harvest still applies. There are no shortcuts, no quick fixes, no overnight successes. Persistence and tenacity are essential.

Just as in ancient times, nomads today build neither pyramids nor lasting legacies. The itinerant who believes that personal fulfillment is waiting just over the next hill, or the drifter who thinks the grass will be greener if he moves on to the next hook-up, in the end will not be able to marshal the interpersonal resources required to produce a meaningful legacy.  

At the end of his life, the relational gadfly will find himself alone and forgotten. He will discover to his chagrin that a man all wrapped up in himself makes a pretty small bundle, and that small self-centered bundles are seldom noticed or remembered.

The quality of our legacies will be a reflection of the quality of our lives and our relationships. Monumental legacies are usually left only by those who make monumental commitments to the people they love and then keep those commitments, day after day, year after year.