I was an impressionable 18-year-old kid – Colorado State FFA Vice President – attending National FFA Convention in Kansas City in November 1981. Susie Barrett was the National Vice President of the Eastern Region and in her retiring address, she quoted poetry.
Poetry! I’m a redneck from LaSalle, Colorado, and we don’t do poetry.
But it inspired me, this poem, and the way Susie weaved it into her speech – a speech that Google helped me find on a fall morning nearly 41-years later. I just re-read that speech and it inspired me again.
She quoted Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.”
Despite our shortcomings, we all have promises to achieve. …the woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.Susie Barrett and Robert Frost
Susie, wherever you are, I hope you are well. And I want you to know how I have carried your words – and Frost’s – with me through a lifetime.
A lifetime of 2 a.m. alarms and starring at a microphone wondering what to say to those on the other side. A lifetime of meetings. A lifetime of fundraisers and stunts (50-hour Ferris wheels, anyone?!). A lifetime of positivity followed by uncertainty. A lifetime of confidence followed by insecurity. A lifetime of joy and pain, satisfaction and disappointment, love and heartbreak.
A lifetime of just trying to matter and to make a difference.
I write this on a near-perfect Colorado fall Sunday morning. One on which I skipped church and now am on my second cigar and fourth cup of coffee. One where I contemplate life with my 60th birthday looming in just a couple of months.
Many of my contemporaries are talking about grandkids and retirement. That seems so foreign to me. Why? Because I have miles to go before I sleep. There is still so much to be done. Problems to be solved. Issues to address. People to love and serve.
If you compare your life to a football game, 0-19 is the first quarter. 20-39 the second. 40-59 the third. 60 – the final whistle is the fourth quarter. The clock is ticking. Time is running out. The game needs to be won.
This blog falls silent for days and weeks and months at a time. My keyboard is still, but I can promise you, my mind is not. I get caught up in those alarms and meetings and efforts just trying to make a difference. I just can’t help but shake the feeling that God requires so much more of me – of all of us.
But it is so much harder now. Society is disrupted and we seem at one another’s throats. The problems are bigger. The issues are larger. And it seems like all anyone wants to do is yell at the problem (and each other), not fix it.
I’ll admit to great fatigue – physically, mentally, and spiritually. It would be so easy – appealing – to stop by Frost’s metaphorical woods, cigar in mouth, coffee in hand, and just be.
But I can’t. We can’t. Our kids, grandkids, community, state, and nation need us. They need us to cast aside our differences, stop yelling, find common ground, and win this game. We need to win it justly – we need to find that victory for all.
So I invite you to join me. My keyboard and voice will reawaken. So should yours.
Because we have miles to go before we sleep.
