Think of this as Volume 14, Number 12 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.
Regular readers here will know I turned 55 in January.
55 is an interesting age. Every day brings new reminders of mortality and infirmity. You can push the former into the background. You can't do that with the latter.
It's both physical and mental. Last week I got a pain in my knee from sleeping wrong. This morning I mis-wrote a headline on a story I really wanted to be popular.
But there are compensations. There are always compensations. Jenni and I have learned to forgive ourselves, and one another. We may fight but we know it's of the moment. We are more physically comfortable than ever. We know more, about what we like and don't like, about ourselves and one another.
It's something like wisdom. But not quite. I have come to believe we can never see wisdom in ourselves, only in others. Wisdom is a face on a postage stamp. It can never be your face, by definition.
But I want to talk about another benefit of being 55. That's knowing how it all turned out. And seeing the wisdom in others' lives.
We all make decisions as young people, filled with unintended consequences. But there is one larger decision we make, one that has far more importance than the decisions we think are so very, very important.
That's a choice about values. Specifically the value of hard work.
Not the monetary value. The personal value of engaging intently in work, of being present in what you do, seeing it as an end in itself, not just a means.
Let me explain with two stories from my recent trip to Texas.
Joe Bentley was a hippie. In some ways he still is.
By that I mean his values lie around the year 1969. Money is not what motivates him. Pleasure does. Not the way you're thinking of it. Joe likes to see meaning in every moment, to take its full measure.
So even when he lived just like a hippie, he always worked hard, and worked well.
Back then, he was a bike mechanic. He was a good bike mechanic, but not a great businessman. He lacked both the organizational skills and the ambition to be really great at business.
But he did great things. He ran bike races, the kind which created the subculture resulting in Lance Armstrong. He helped with recreational rides, like the Houston Moonlight Bicycle Ramble, which is still held every fall. And when he found someone he loved, he helped raise her daughter. He strapped blocks to bike pedals so the little girl could join them on a triplet, a bicycle built for three.
That little girl is 40 now. She inherited his values, and loves working hard. She has teenagers of her own. Joe is treading dangerously close to great-grand-parenthood.
Now look at the picture again.
Around 1990 Joe decided to give up the bike business. He switched from doing what he was good at to doing what he loved. He went to cooking school.
It was a long slog, but it would not be unfair to call him an unknown baking legend. Everywhere he has worked reviewers have raved over his bread, his pastries, his desserts, never knowing whom they were really cheering.
For the last several years he has been at Picnic, a shop on Bissonnet Street in Houston, near the Museum district, about two miles south of his old shop. He comes in around 2 AM six days a week, works until he's done (around noon), and absolutely loves it.
Everything he makes has his personal stamp, a stamp I first tasted over 30 years ago. He doesn't over-mix. Each ingredient stands on its own. He makes a cheese biscuit with real hunks of cheese, with salt granules you can taste individually, with a little sprinkle of sugar on top. He makes scones with big pieces of fruit inside, sugar-crusted, flaky, tender and incredible. He made a blueberry sorbet I tried recently, in the restaurant that's actually part of the same business. What's it got in it, he asked with a twinkle in his eye. Then he answered, cloves. Cloves with blueberries? You wouldn't think so, but it works well.
He is, in other words, an artist. (He also lost 100 pounds recently on the Atkins diet. He's a baker who never touches his own stuff, an artist who never sees his art, a Beethoven of the oven.)
The woman with the little girl, the lady he eventually married, still the love of his life? She left a successful college professor for this 23 year-old hippie kid. And she chose well. Very well, indeed.
The Redneck
To look at him my niece's husband, Richard Laubach, has nothing in common with Joe Bentley. He's a proud Republican, while Joe's a Democrat. He's a lover of alcohol, but anything stronger is anathema.
When he first met his wife , two decades ago, the family didn't think much of him. He seemed lazy. He seemed to lack ambition.
But Richard Laubach is a saint. He has saved the family he moved into, simply by being himself.
What he is, at heart, is a worker. Richard works hard. Whatever he's doing, he works hard at it. If he's laying tile, he works hard at it. If he's riding a horse he works hard at it. He works hard on fatherhood and works hard on his marriage.
My father-in-law left a cross for each of his children to bear, when he left his body a few years ago. He left money and property, he left love and generosity, he left his own example of hard work and taking care of others. But his legacy included unfinished business, and to each of his children he gave a share of it.
To his eldest, it was a drafty house he'd designed himself, a money pit. To his son it was a ranch in the town he'd grown up in, land that required tending. To my wife it was a lake house and a cousin who loved it but lacked the wherewithal -- in all ways -- to care for it.
Richard has turned all these burdens into opportunities.
For the eldest he became a handyman. He tiled the basement after it flooded and kept the place from falling down. For the son he took on the land, and believes he can not only make the family's payments on it from cattle sales, but make enough extra money so it will be worthwhile for himself and his two sons. For my wife he is bringing a crew of teenagers up to the lake house, with dumpsters, and will tear that place back to whatever is salvageable, valuable enough (perhaps) to pay for my kids' college.
Richard doesn't think he's doing anyone any favors in any of this. He sees himself getting fair value for money. He will get use of the ranch and the chance to buy in -- certainly he and his wife will inherit at least a piece. He's making money, part of his living, from his handyman and clean-up roles.
But it's all a mitzvah (a blessing) and he is a mensch (a real man). His sons are strong and imbued with his sense of responsibility, his habit of hard work. His example makes him the truest heir to my father-in-law I know of.
All because he values hard work, not for what it brings him but for its own sake.
That's the lesson. That's what I learned when it all came out. Don't work hard for the money, or because someone tells you to. Find work you like, and love that work, as I do writing.
That's the real key to success.
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