My workdays end with the same ritual of gratitude – a quick glimpse down at my hands to savor the day’s canvas – dirt plastered knuckles, fresh cuts and bruises, and fingernails packed with mud. Filthy hands are an odd thing to delight in, but they have become a powerful reminder of the self-agency I have over my well-being, and nature’s unfaltering role as my ally in living a good life.
Eight years ago, in Humanities and Human Flourishing, I was tasked with comparing two contrasting pieces of literature: “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” by Tolstoy and “Neighbour Rosicky” by Willa Cather. The protagonists in these stories inspired a life-changing epiphany – that there is a self-weighted equilibrium and distributional balance to the pillars of well-being, and whatever algorithm and hierarchy I had been living by wasn’t serving me. I didn’t know it then, but many years later, after traversing peaks and valleys of courage and resilience, I would become a farmer like Rosicky; I would transform a life governed and depleted by over-achievement for one blessed with a more steadfast, daily blend of positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment.
So I look down at my dirty hands at the end of each day in remembrance of my capacity to reorient towards and seek out a well-lived life.
