Finding a way to yes
We have welcomed a new farmer from Tokyo for a two week stay. A 23 year old “wwoofer” or volunteer farmer, Mio is in her final year of graduate school to become a veterinarian. A pig vet at that! When she was planning her trip months ago, she Googled “agriculture in the United States” and soon found herself waking up at five every morning to milk cows on a dairy farm in Wisconsin and pulling weeds on a cattle farm in Houston the following week.
Not that the farm work here is anymore glamorous. But we’ve made it our task to take Mio under our red, white, and blue wings and show her the best parts of American culture and a place we’re still getting to know ourselves. Two days ago, as Nate, Mio and I sat on salvaged patio furniture in the yard and picked at roasted farm duck, Mio asked one of her first personal questions since arriving: “Are most Americans…like you? Working many jobs instead of one career? Like, figuring it out?” We laughed, explaining that, yes, to some degree many young Americans have a less direct career path and that it’s a cultural norm for people to try out many vocations in their lifetime. Mio will have her doctorate at 24, and it’s clear that she grew up in a culture that values hard work, loyalty, and pursing security as early in life as possible. There’s not a lot of space for “figuring it out” or “finding your dream job” in Japanese culture. “I will be a veterinarian all my life,” she told us with a note of pride.
It’s with this kind of focus that Mio shows up on the farm as our most dutiful and eager worker. We joke that we could ask her any old question and she’ll always answer yes - sometimes even before we can finish asking it!
“Can you be ready to go to the movies in ten minutes even though you’re covered in pig poop?”
“Want to smoke pot for the very first time in your life?”
“Would you help us castrate those piglets?“
“Could you hold this flapping chicken while I go pee in the woods?”
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
Mio’s yes-ness has inspired me. She has me thinking about how for so many years I’ve had to live with a stance of “no,” protecting myself from what may cause harm to my unwell body. Now I see that saying no has been perfectly appropriate while I’ve been recovering. My body has needed predictability, safety and daily naps because it’s been fighting a major infection for almost a decade. The boundaries that come with “no” were necessary for my survival. (I wish I could have seen it that way at the time- I would have saved myself so much anguish!)
But now that I am healing - like, healing for real - I’m soaking in what it feels like to enter back into the land of the living, into the wonderful space of yes, where healthy people commit to plans to go hiking without worrying how much pain it will inflict, where vacations are not spent in bed, where life feels as freeing as wearing shorts and flip flops on the first warm day of spring.
While I am overjoyed to be entering a new phase of “yes” I know there will be more “no” seasons ahead for me, and I am more prepared for those now. I’ve heard myself say many times that I missed out on my twenties and the experiences I imagined people have post-college (building a career, starting a family, and traveling) while I was on my parents couch every weekend about as miserable as can be.
But all those years of “no” are somehow becoming integrated into something more life-affirming than just “missing out” or “being behind.” I have learned there is an abysmal gap between an attitude of “yes” and “no” when you’re in the throes of a seriously hard life event. I’m still in awe of the Lyme patients I know who can tell me the disease is the best thing that ever happened to them. They are usually the people who have become even more generous and compassionate because of their illness and found a way to make it mean something more than being forced to sit on the sidelines while life passes by. I am still somewhere in between on the spectrum of “yes” and “no” as my healing is unfolding every week. But I will say, after not being able to push a lawnmower five feet a few summers ago, I mowed a field for an hour this morning, grinning like an idiot over the power and capability of my body, looking on at my completed work with a joyful “Hell yes!"
