Haycorns

Crunch! Grind! Surely something is wrong with the car.

Five majestic oaks line our long Wisconsin driveway. I love the trees and the wildlife they support. Each September, though, they carpet the drive with the loose organic gravel Winnie-the-Pooh called  “haycorns.” I take out the leaf blower with the rechargeable battery to clear acorns from the asphalt. At first it is fun. The battery runs down and I take a break. After it charges, I blow some more. An acorn falls on my head. By the second recharge, the fun is wearing off. My charge has run down too.

Like most things in life, it’s a trade-off. We always have choices, even if we don’t have the choice we’d prefer. Reframing “have to” as “choose to” gives me a sense of agency, even if the outcome is the same. I could cut down the oaks or leave the drive too bumpy for comfort. I’m not required to blow the acorns aside. I enjoy the freedom to choose this task over the alternatives.

There isn’t always one clear best choice. Socrates drank hemlock rather than hide his opinions, Galileo recanted rather than face torture for heresy, and I don’t respect either man the less. Other cases are more mundane. I wasn’t forced to cancel the picnic because of rain; I decided to. I didn’t have to stay home sick; I chose that over the risk of infecting others. It boosts my resilience to treat myself as an actor in my own life instead of a mere victim of circumstance or fate.