My increasing number of missed shots when hunting pheasants and other wild game during the past few years has led me to ponder the many figurative hits and misses I’ve made in life.

 

In our house we eat many pheasants, deer and the fish I catch in farm ponds, because they taste good (Iowa corn-fed, you know), are fun to match wits with and they aren’t fed growth hormones or antibiotics.

I have plenty of excuses for my worst shots when hunting, like my arthritis and my multiple retina detachments that cause debris to float in the vitreous fluid of my eyeballs so my field of vision looks like “birds that are flying everywhere” – but I know my poor aim is really due to other factors, like my declining coordination and reaction time as I age. I don’t have as good excuses for the missed shots I’ve taken when farming and in life.

My son, with whom I usually hunt pheasants and other game birds, and sometimes other hunting buddies, also know my age and life circumstances are catching up with me, but they proclaim “nice shot,” when it’s probably one of their nearly simultaneous shots that downed the pheasant, goose or quail.

Their compliments are wonderfully uplifting, and I love them for their generous acknowledgements even when I don’t deserve them. Is there anything better in life than knowing others appreciate us in spite of missing easy shots? Yup – even if we miss hitting our targets, knowing that we tried to our fullest extent and being able to forgive ourselves for shortcomings is a more important accomplishment that nothing can replace. As a fellow farmer said before he died somewhat over a year ago, “I don’t care what others think of me; I care what I think of me.”

We all need our own understanding and, especially, our personal forgiveness for missed shots.

Farmers especially work hard to produce maximum crop yields and the best livestock. Knowing we gave our best efforts to the production of food and materials for clothing, shelter and fuel are our most important life assessment indicators, even if we failed at hanging onto our land and the other resources involved in our agricultural operations.

There is nothing more distressing to farmers and their families than losing their land and the opportunity to farm, except perhaps losing a child in a farming mishap. Nearly every published research study of farm stressors has reached this conclusion.

When we have given everything we have to being a successful farmer and know this about ourselves, however, we can live easier with the follow-up after farming than if we didn’t put our entire hearts and minds into being competent agricultural producers.

We receive feedback about choosing life paths and correcting off-target motives from our best shots, even if we miss, for the feedback gives us indications if we have paid sufficient attention to examining our outward behaviors and our internal motives. The opportunities to improve our character that we have not paid attention to are usually our worst shots. We need forgiveness.

Forgiving others who have hurt us is terribly difficult. It’s especially hard when we have to forgive family members whom we expect to understand and who don’t seem to care, such as when farmland is “in the balagnce” in an estate settlement. Forgiving ourselves is even harder.

Our self-worth hangs on our capacity to produce successfully and deteriorates when we don’t succeed. When we are farmers who incur a negative bottom line for our efforts, we feel particularly dismayed.

We view ourselves as failures, and especially so when we are the generation that loses the land our ancestors worked hard to obtain. If our children won’t have the same opportunity to farm because we lost the family heritage, our dismay is even worse.

Losing a farming heritage is not the endall. The survivors of economic perils who had to leave agricultural callings can take comfort and pride if they gave farming their best shot. It’s a heavy load to bear when we feel we have given everything to achieve our life’s goals and it wasn’t enough. But when we have given our best to farming, or whatever callings we undertake, we have no reason to feel ashamed.

So many of the factors that affect our farming success, or whatever we pursue as our occupation, are beyond our control.

We have to be able to forgive ourselves when what we tried has not worked. Having put everything we have into our callings and our lives, we can face our Higher Power and know we have given it our best effort. We can feel at peace.

It is especially validating when our hunting partners say “good shot,” as if to say they appreciate what we have done, and they recognize our lives are more than hitting everything for which we aim.

The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of Farm World. Dr. Mike Rosmann is a psychologist and farmer in western Iowa. Readers may contact him at mike@agbehavioralhealth.com