A Little More than Hope
In 2022, after a long trip on the road, I began a new ritual with Tommy Lee, my three-year-old son, who, fortunately for me, is still very fond of his mother.
After my return home, we head to one of Junction City’s finest institutions, Tin Sing, our local Chinese restaurant. We love to sip Oolong tea out of tiny porcelain cups and indulge in our guilty pleasure of fried shrimp drenched in neon bright sweet and sour sauce and, for me, a lot of spicy mustard.
As we wait near the entrance to pay, I always lift up Tommy Lee so we can gaze at the Chinese Lunar Calendar pinned up on the wall next to the door. This calendar is based on the moon and sun cycles and dictates which animal represents a given year.
Tommy asks, “what animal am I, Momma?”
Tommy Lee was born in 2019, the year of the pig, and me (you will have to guess what year I was born), the year of the horse. We then list the family members and their associated birth year animals.
My son always identifies his favorite animals: cows, dogs, and farm cats, in that order. But after watching the Disney movie Ratatouille, my son has developed a fondness for rats. To be clear, the whimsical animated rats that can throw down in a French kitchen.
After talking about rats, many thoughts surfaced in my mind.
I recently started the second book by one of my favorite authors, David Goggins. If you have yet to hear about David Goggins, now is the time to learn about him. Goggins is a retired United State Navy SEAL and former United State Air Force Tactical Air Control Party member. He is considered one of the world’s best ultra-endurance athletes’ winning multiple marathons and breaking Guinness World Records. He uses his story to inspire and help others demolish their fears, push through pain, and reach their ultimate potential. Goggins is such a powerful motivator that he is sought after by the world’s top executives, VIPS, and celebrities, including The Rock, Dwayne Johnson.
In his most recent book, released on December 4th, 2022, Never Finished: Unshackle Your Mind and Win the War Within, Goggins opens the book with a discussion about none other than rats!
In the book introduction, Goggins writes about one of his favorite laboratory experiments. In the 1950s, Curt Richter, an American biologist, conducted a study on rats. Richter dropped dozens of rats into glass cylinders filled with water. Since rats are great swimmers, it was logical to hypothesize that they would continue to swim; however, that was not the case. The rats would begin by paddling at the top of the water, shortly after swimming down the jar in search of an escape, only to drown a few minutes later.
Richter then modified the experiment. In the second trial, like before, rats were placed in glass cylinders filled with water. When it looked like the rats were going to give up, Richter and his technicians would pick up the rats, dry them off with a towel, and hold them until their respiratory rates normalized. After the rats stabilized, they placed them back into the water-filled cylinders and repeated this process multiple times.
Unlike the first experiment, the rats did not drown. With no rest or food, the rats swam for an average of six hours, and one rat continued for eighty-one hours!
So, what changed?
Richter suggested that the first rats gave up because they lacked hope. Conversely, according to Richter, the interventions by his team in the second experiment kept the rats going because of the possibility that someone would save them, giving them the power of hope.
Goggins had other ideas.
Although hope is critical in life, Goggins wrote that the rats required more than hope to prevent their confidence from fading while fighting for their lives to stay alive in those water-filled cylinders. The rats had belief so strong that they became resilient.
As Goggins poignantly wrote, “Then there’s belief born in resilience. It comes from working your way through layers of pain, fatigue, and reason and ignoring the ever-present temptation to quit until you strike a source of fuel you didn’t even know existed. One that eliminates all doubt, makes certain of your strength and the fact that eventually, you will prevail, so long as you keep moving forward. That is the level of belief that can defy the expectations of scientists and change everything. It’s not an emotion to be shared or an intellectual concept, and nobody else can give it to you. It must be bubbled up from within.” (Giggins 9).
After multiple years with both individual and industry broad challenges, you likely anticipate looking at 2022 in the rearview mirror.
Let’s be honest; like myself, as a farmer and advocate, you may experience such deep hurt and disappointment that it can be tempting to give up.
But that is not an option.
Those that truly believe and those that are strong survive; and the individuals who make up our natural resources sectors in Oregon are the most resilient.
You wake up every day and, despite everything, take care of your business, and everyone else’s too. You help build and sustain a foundation for Oregon communities and are the backbone of our society.
As we welcome the New Year, what kind of rat will you be?
Will you continue to move forward, ignore temptation to give up, push through pain, adapt and navigate the guaranteed disappointment that life brings, and fight the fatigue that haunts you?
Darn right, you will.
Because we need you, our future depends on you, and you are bad-to-the-bone.
Here’s to 2023!
With belief, confidence, and resiliency,
Tiffany, Katie, and Diann
Source
Goggins, David. Never Finished: Unshackle Your Mind and Win the War Within. Lioncrest Publishing, Druk, 2022