What we have been going through for the past few months has given us negative realities that range from boring, inconvenient and frustrating to devastating, painful and catastrophic. It is easy to find things to be frustrated, sad and angry about. I hope we can all find things to appreciate, celebrate and be grateful for.
This pandemic has allowed me to get closer to my Grandfather.
People in my family may be shocked to hear this because my maternal Grandfather died 50 years ago. I was alone with him in my family’s living room telling him stories of the school trip that I had arrived home from the night before. He was grilling me with questions and listening intently to hear about my adventures and learning when his breathing became loud and scary. He was rushed to the hospital and I never saw him again.
He died in June of 1970. In January of 1970 his book “The Life and Adventures or a Pioneer” was published. Last weekend within a few weeks of 50 years of our living room conversation I spent two days with the stories he left behind. When I was 12 or 13 I found them so boring that I couldn’t get through them. Now at a more advanced age and having life experiences that in some ways paralleled his I was enthralled.
In 1905 when he was still in his teens he learned that if he travelled to the new frontier to the north he could buy 150 acres of land for $75.00 if he would clear at least two acres to plant crops and have a house built on it within three years. He decided to take it on to make his fortune and the story of a pioneer kicked off.
There are many lessons that I learned from my Grandfather last weekend. Here are a few of them.
Perspective
He lived in a time when transportation was a train or a horse drawn carriage. He lived in a time when not everyone had electricity or indoor plumbing. He lived in a time when there may or may not be a road to get to where you want to go. He lived in a time when if you were injured or sick you may get to see a doctor and he may or may not have been able to help you. He lived in a time without modern day safety nets like unemployment insurance or health insurance. He lived in a time when if everything you built was burned in a fire you started again. He lived in a time of a worldwide pandemic and he got the Spanish Flu. He lived in a time when World Wars changed or stopped everything. He lived in a time when communicating with someone that was not in your town meant writing a letter or sending a telegram. He lived in a time when your concern was not having a variety of food, it was simply having food. He told a poignant story of my Grandmother and their first child (my uncle) going to visit friends in a town where they used to live. A forest fire came through and wiped out most of the town they were visiting. Their friends’ home was spared. She asked the friend to go to the telegraph office to let her husband know they were ok. He went to the telegraph office and was told the town he wanted to send the message to doesn’t exist anymore and that he couldn’t send a message. Even if it did, the wires were burnt.
Last week a couple of times people froze up for a few seconds on one of our zoom calls. Perspective!
Perseverance
My Grandfather’s story was a series of successes and his words “reversals”. He would build something up and it would burn down. He would build something up and a pandemic would stall or reverse things. He would build something up and an economic depression would take it away. He would build something up and a World War would tear it down. He would build something up and a poor choice of a partner might bring it down. At 72 years of age he had a business and three other jobs. Maybe when you get knocked down a lot it is easier to deal with getting knocked down.
The Law of Attraction
There is a wonderful story of meeting a man on a train. He shared part of his vision with a man on the train. He had to build a house so he could marry my grandmother and have a place to start a life with her. He didn’t know how he was going to be able to it but he had the vision. A few weeks later the man showed up with a proposition for him to build his home. Within two weeks the man showed up with a crew of men and built a two story log cabin exterior and roof in 8 ½ hours. I look back on my own life to notice how many “man on the train” stories I have in my life.
Friends and Family
Without a doubt, the biggest lesson of the book is that through all the trials and tribulations, through all the successes and reversals of health and wealth, and through all the years of a life well lived and beyond all the gold he prospected and mined, the real gold comes in the form of family and friends. In 1939 my Grandfather had a poem published in the New York World’s Fair Anthology of Verse. The poem was entitled “A Friend”. Like my Grandfather, I have been blessed with three children, a wonderful wife and hundreds of dear friends and acquaintances.
Thank you worldwide pandemic!
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Kevin MacDonald and Shelley MacDougall are the coaches for CMAA. If you would like a copy of the poem “A Friend” that Hugh Alexander Campbell wrote, please e-mail kmacdonald@dccnet.com