Are You Tough Enough to Cut Your Own Grass at 90?

At the end of last year, I lost a lady that was very special to me named Mrs. Hazel. She wasn’t my grandmother, but she definitely had that grandmotherly feel. I used to love sitting with her for hours listening to the stories she’d tell about her life experiences. She died at 98, being born in 1921, and the country had literally come of age and grown up around her. It was amazing what all she experienced.

She was eight when the stock market fell, throwing us into the Great Depression. She remembered the first car that rolled into town and the first paved roads. She remembered the tail end of Women’s Suffrage and was in her 30s and 40s during the Civil Rights Movement. EIGHTEEN official pandemics directly affected the United States (not counting COVID-19) during her lifetime and the U.S. was involved in 47 major military engagements and wars. Yet, this little old lady just kept on keeping on through all of it. She played the piano in our church and cut her own grass well into her 90s, because well, we were all scared to tell her she couldn’t. She was an incredible human being. Tough as nails because life had made her that way, yet as sweet of a person as you’ll ever find.  

I saw an article the other day that said this:

“If you were born in the year 1900 (for easy math), you were 14 when WWI started, and it ended the year you turned 18. The world lost 22 million people during that conflict. Later that same year the Spanish Flu hit and the world deals with that until you are 20. 50 million people die worldwide in those two years from the sickness.

When you’re 29, the Great Depression begins and lasts until you’re 33. Unemployment hits 25% and the country nearly collapses, along with the economies of most of the rest of the world. At 39, WWII starts and the U.S. enters into the fight when you’re 41. Another 81 million people died worldwide between your 39th and 45th birthdays (75 million in combat and 6 million in the Holocaust). The Korean War starts when you’re 50 and takes another 5 million lives.

At 62 you experience the Cuban Missile Crisis where all life on earth could have ended with the decisions of just a few men, and at 64 the U.S. enters conflict with Vietnam where 4 million people die. You’re 75 when the Vietnam war ends and then you’re caught up to the point in history where most all of us reading this come in.”

I’ll let you take it from there.

When you look around at what’s going on in 2020, it’s easy to get discouraged and think we’ve never seen a year like this before. Everything is unprecedented and the world is crumbling before our eyes, right? But that’s not exactly true, of course. Things sure have piled up quickly on us this year, but history is full of ups and downs, with one constant… humans find a way to adapt and survive.

As I delivered my sermon to our church via livestream the other night (most of you know from editorials past that I’m also a minister), I had this thought: “What would churches have done years ago before Facebook and Zoom meetings to survive this quarantine? They probably would have been in a mess!” Well, I’m not sure exactly how they handled it, but the church has survived things much worse than this, even without our fancy newfangled technology. You might have been tempted to say recently, “We wouldn’t have been able to stay in business without being able to work remote, advanced tools, medical capabilities, etc.” Or even, “Why is this all happening to me? We can’t survive this!” Well, many who ran contracting companies before you figured out a way to live through protests, wars, pandemics, and economic instability as well. There’s a good bit of nepotism in the trades with family-owned businesses running through multiple legacy generations. If you’re blessed enough to have some of these patriarchs still around, lean in and listen close to what they have to say about staying power and determination.

Admittedly, there’s a reason we call many that came before us the “greatest generation” and each one after them hasn’t been labeled “the improvement generation.” The tougher lives they lived made them into tougher people, where I believe our technology and conveniences sometimes soften us a bit (I type this as you’re out sweating turning wrenches, and I’m sitting at a computer with a fan in my face). But guess what? There will be generations that come after us that will need us to persevere just as we needed those before us. The only choice is to play the hand you’ve been dealt as best you can, then push forward.  

Nearing the end of Mrs. Hazel’s life, I remember her telling me something very profound: After recounting what I consider to be an unimaginably tough life, she said, “And thinking back, I wouldn’t change a thing.” That sounds cliché, sure, but over 98 years of living through seemingly more rain than sunshine, she realized the tough times had made her appreciate the good times even more.

If given the choice, I think we’d all choose to just revert back to the blissful ignorance of January, hit the reset button on 2020 and hope for a better result, but we don’t have that option. My question for us all now is, are we going to let 2020 beat us? Will we be the ones who fold up shop and say “it was just too much”? Or will we make those who have come before us proud and have the respect of younger generations who talk to us in our twilight years?

If you’re struggling through this and thinking about throwing in the towel, I’ve said from the very beginning, I don’t have all the answers. But I can help, if by no other way than to just listen and come up with some practical steps to get your business through this valley and on to brighter days.

Reach out to me at [email protected] or call (800) 489-9099. Let’s get through this together, stand strong together, and figure this problem out together. I’m sure 2020 isn’t finished with its surprises just yet, but together we’re tough enough to throw a few punches of our own.