Pull From The Roots

It's a saturday in the middle of July. Yardwork is calling me, but I'm not listening. Blogging is better than weeding. But the weeds just keep growing.

I remember as a small boy the chores of the summer, which included mowing the lawn and pulling weeds. I dreaded pulling the weeds the most. It always seemed like there was an endless supply of weeds. And, for some reason, the weeds always grew faster than the grass. For this reason it was easy to spot the weeds on the lawn, especially the dandelions.

I learned, over time, that the weeds were easier to pull out of the ground, if the earth was moist. If I waited until midday when it was dry and hot, it was practically impossible to pull out the weeds.
Sometimes I did not pull out the weeds before I mowed the lawn. I would just skip that task. And, when the lawn was freshly cut, no one could tell there had been any weeds at all.

But within only a day or two, the weeds would return, sometimes in greater numbers, and they always grew faster than the grass.
When my mother realized what I had done, she would promptly send me out again to the lawn or to the garden to pull weeds. But the second attempt was often as futile as the first. This time, instead of mowing down the weeds, I would just pull off the tops of the weeds.

At first glance, it looked like I had successfully removed the weeds. But in a day or two there would be compelling evidence, all over the lawn: a new crop of weeds would implicate me for my carelessness.

My mother would send me out again, but this time she would follow me, saying things like “If you had done it right the first time you wouldn’t be doing it again.” I watched her pull a few weeds, sometimes with a tool, and sometimes with just her bare hands. As she pulled the weeds she would often say. “if you want to get rid of the weed, once and for all, you have got to pull from the roots.”
Over the years I have often thought of my mother’s statement while pulling weeds in my own yard. I would reflect on her words “Pull from the roots” over and over again.

Solving life’s problems require that we do more than scratch the surface. We need to get to the root of the problem. We need to pull from the roots.

A friend once said to me “We’ve all got problems, stand in line.”

I laughed at first at this comment, but then I quietly thought about what he said. My friend was right. No one is exempt from problems. We live in a world full of problems. And there are some really big problems out there. Here is list of a few:

Abortion
Addiction
Aging/ Elderly Issues
AIDS
Alcoholism
Being a single parent
Child abuse/ Spousal Abuse
Civil Disorder
Crime
Debt
Divorce
Disabilities
Drugs/Drug violence
Economic Survival
Education Crisis
Environment issues
Ethnic Strife/Prejudice
Famine/Starvation
Financial Crisis
Gangs/ Gang violence
Greed
Health Care Costs
Homelessness
Homicide/ Suicide
Illiteracy
Incest/ Sexual Abuse
Insurance Costs
Legal Costs
Massacres/Holocaust
Media influences
Moral Decay
Natural Disasters
Oppression/ Tyranny/ Slavery
Pornography
Poverty
Racism
Rape
Sexism
Smoking Addiction
Taxes
Terrorism
War
Wide spread Diseases
World Economic Competition

The above list of problems is not a complete list, but newspapers are filled, every day, with headlines and news reports covering tragic stories about problems like these.

Problems can make us feel helpless and hopeless. It is easy to get caught up in problems because there are so many and some are so very severe.

But the biggest problem could be that, as individuals, and as a society for that matter, we have become too problem focused. And we have become to jaded and numb because of it.

The first problem that could be in the way of progress is that the problem focus is the problem. Of course we need to give problems proper attention, but not too much attention. We need to strive to find solutions. We need to be solution focused!

So what is the solution. We need to be action oriented!

I better go pull some weeds.