The past three or four mornings I’ve been up shortly after daylight working in my garden. It’s tiresome, and that’s a weary hour for me, but in 95 degree weather it’s early morning or not at all.

As I work in the garden or on the farm I think about alot of things and appreciate being rooted in the basics of life: sweat, manure, death, life, abscesses, foot rot, retained placenta, and the joy of a harvested crop in the barn. As I thought about recent news events I found myself wondering if Michael Jackson had ever grown a tomato.

As you know, Jackson died a couple of days ago. What a weird, miserable, confused individual. It didn’t have to be that way. Somewhere along the way he lost his rootedness and foundation. Maybe he never had it. But more likely the entertainment industry machine ate away his soul.

I think keeping a finger in the dirt is an important strategy for staying in touch with the basics. Growing tomatoes is a good balance to staying at those high-end, expensive resorts where they spritz your face with chilled Evian.

Today I went fishing with my girls. Rule #1: Bait your own hook. Those pretty manicured fingernails need some worm guts under them. It’ll help the girls to remember how the other half lives, and hopefully keep them rooted while they are being spoiled with manicures, tennis lessons, and trips to American Girl.  

It’s 10:30 p.m. and I’m off to bed. It’s Summer vacation for the girls, so before they turn in tonight they’ve got to go back to the barn to bottle feed a couple of baby goats. That keeps ’em rooted too, I hope.

I don’t know if my kids will grow up well-balanced, but I’m going to be sure they know how to shovel manure and grow their own tomatoes.

We can’t all, always, be the least guy in the room. Sometimes, you’re the strongest person in the room; and you should be! That’s why you are here, to help others develop; to use your experiential wisdom to help others more easily navigate life’s path. So there are definitely times you should intentially be the strongest person in a group.

It’s difficult to decide how to invest when someone asks for your help. My method of deciding isn’t perfect, but I do have a criteria for determining whether I’ll invest in somebody or a group of somebodies:

1. Are they learners? If they aren’t oriented toward Core Value #2  Learning & Growing: Collecting Wisdom, then I am being unwise when I invest the seeds of my experience into their life.
2. Can I make a difference? If investing into another person isn’t going to matter because they aren’t going to appreciate and nurture the investment, or because they can’t—don’t have capacity to use what I am teaching them—then I am wasting the seed of my experience by investing it into their life.

You can’t always know in advance whether an investment of time, energy, and experience into someone’s life will be profitable. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes you’ve got to know when to stop throwing good seed after bad, or, in the words of Kenny Rogers “you’ve got to know when to fold ’em.” Sometimes you have to extricate yourself from the situation because you discover the ground you are throwing seeds on is too hard to allow them to sprout, or so weed infested that your influence is choked out. I’m  reminded of that old adage “Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig.” So I suppose one tip is “listen for the squeeling. When you hear it, that’s a sign you may need to get out of the pig pen.”

Then there are those times when it is right to invest in someone even though there is absolutely no earthly return for our investment. Sometimes it’s about just giving a warm hug, a cold compress, or holding someone’s hand in a comforting way. It’s about being a giver and a blesser; doing for others what they can’t do for themselves. That’s yet a different situation, and that’s an investment we all should be ready to make.