The World is Going to Keep Right on Turning

I mentioned in another post that my dad was an orthodontist. He was also a rancher. That seems like a strange combination, but he made it work beautifully. I was helping him work cattle one day when I was about ten. Working cattle isn’t easy, in case you’ve never done it. I made a mistake that caused a small calf to die near the end of the day. I sat down and started to cry. My dad sat down next to me, put his arm around me and said these words.

“You know I’d sit here and cry a river of tears if it would bring that calf back, but it won’t. I do know one thing. Tomorrow the sun will come up in the east and the world is going to keep right on turning.”

I remember it like it was yesterday. He was lessening the weight of my mistake and that helped me feel better. More importantly, he was teaching me a lesson about keeping things in their proper perspective. It’s been the most important lesson of my life.

Ranch work is tough, even on a good day. Unexpected events are frequent visitors. Mistakes are as familiar as your best friend’s face. My dad had high standards, but he never expected life to be perfect. Where did he get this wisdom?

Born in 1923, he was about seven when the great depression hit. He spent his childhood in the South Dakota dustbowl. He almost died three times before he was a teenager. He was hit by a car, had small pox, and a massive infection from a botched operation. His high school graduation present was going into World War II. I guess all that helps you take the rest of life’s disappointments in stride.

He used this saying with me often, but he wasn’t making light of whatever I was going through. He was trying to take the pressure off of me by showing me a different way of looking at things. He was saying, it’s not all about how I want things to be. The universe doesn’t revolve around that. No matter what happens the world will continue as it was made to.

Relieving some of the weight of life from my shoulders was a tremendous gift. It is now part of who I am. In Why Take a Chance When You Have a Cinch, I explained how he taught me to get things right the first time by being thorough. That eliminated most of life’s problems for me. Knowing the world is going to keep right on turning has helped me withstand the things beyond my control. That takes care of almost every situation I can imagine.

He didn’t just tell me these things. He lived them. I saw countless examples over the years. They were even part of his passing. He had Parkinson’s disease for many years and never complained. Then he was diagnosed with kidney cancer and needed surgery. I walked beside him as they wheeled him back for the operation on a gurney. He looked up at me when I could no longer walk with him and said the words I knew were coming. “The world is going to keep right on turning.”

He died a couple weeks later from an infection. We were with him as he took his last breath. At that moment I looked out of the hospital window to see the sun peaking above the horizon. He died just as the sun was coming up in the east. The world was indeed still turning. Life has never been the same without him, but his words are stitched inside my soul. I know, no matter what happens, the world is going to keep right on turning and that makes all the difference. Nothing more complicated than perception.

May you have enough today one moment at a time.

Let your Vagus nerve help.