Making Waves in Still Water

Where's the Fire?
by B.J. Eick, director of youth activities

Where is your fire? Where does your passion lie? What makes you get out of bed in the morning and stay up late at night? If you can identify the one thing you want more than anything else in the world, you have found your fire.

My passion is livestock. Nothing gets me more excited than selecting matings and waiting to see what happens. As soon as the babies hit the ground, I ’m already trying to determine what to breed them to. I love everything about raising livestock. Sure, there are days when you end up dirty, wet, cold and tired. There are days when you can’t pay the bills and days when you wonder why in the world you even bother at all, but something about it makes you keep going back time and time again.

To me it ’s the feeling you get when you first walk in the barn to feed and they are all looking to you with joy and excitement knowing their next meal is on the way. It ’s the deafening silence after the last bucket of feed is dumped. It ’s the joy of watching a newborn take its first steps, knowing you played a part in giving life and it ’s the excitement and celebration after a big win or a great sale.

Last Saturday was crazy. We were having one of those hectic, no time to stop, no time to think, lets go, lets go, lets go kind of days. If you don ’t know the kind of day I am talking about, then we need to trade places for a while. By eight in the morning I had done chores, pulled a calf, doctored a sick hog, delivered a load of hay and helped the combine crew get to the field.

I was right in the middle of loading my second load of hay when my phone rang. It was my dad. “B.J.,”he said, “this gilt is in heat, what do you want to do?” I was really busy. “I don ’t know,” I said, “I ’ll have to order some semen, I ’ll call you back later.”

My day went on with the same pace. Busy, busy, busy. It was about eight at night when I finally got back to the homestead. I was just sitting down to enjoy an Oscar Mayer delicacy when it hit me. I never ordered semen. Now  that gilt won ’t be able to have pigs until March and March pigs aren’t worth anything!

That day, I had spent so much time being busy I forgot to take care of the one thing that was really important to me. So much of my effort was being spent putting out all the fires surrounding me, I had soaked my fire to ashes.

It happens to all of us, and it probably happens more often than we would like to admit. We become so involved with everything going on around us that we forget to take care of the things we feel are truly important. We abandon, the things in our life we truly believe in for the sake of taking care of all lifes other little problems.

Inside every person is a fire burning for something. We all have a dream, a desire, a passion. If you are going to reach your goals and dreams, you have to remember, when life has you fighting fires, you had better keep your fire burning or you will only end the day cold and wet.