Strange old town

In my off days I've been working at an apple farm in my hometown. It's nice because it gets me out of the house, outside, and doing honest work. Although carrying a bushel of apples around your neck for six to eight hours a day is rough, the pay is good and I have the pride of doing well something that most people would shirk from. And the views from the orchard are fantastic.

The guys I work with are a bizarre group. Two are Mexicans who have worked there for about 10 years. Then there's Jimmy, a kid who went to the prestigious high school in town but never went to college, though he's clearly smart enough to, and just sort of seems to bum around town doing whatever suits him. Then there's my old friend who's getting ready to move to Hollywood to make movies, though he loves working at the orchard. Finally there's the eccentric owner of the orchard, who rants about poor people not working and makes leering comments about woman at the fruit stand, yet pays us well and keeps the whole insane operation running in the black.

As I was plucking Jonagolds from the tree today, I silently listened to their conversations about women, politics, jobs, lazy kids who aren't working there anymore, high school football, the local police, and the like. And I realized that their conceptions of who they were and how they were living their life was so different from mine. Here I am, trying to find a purpose, a path, some noble truth to which I can dedicate myself and achieve great things. I've got an internal set of principles that, as much as I struggle with them, manage to guide my decisions and intentions. But these guys don't operate like that. When they talked about what they wanted, be it money or women or whatever, that thing became an end in and of itself. What they would do and how they would act with it was given no consideration. They gave only thought to what they could gain, and not a thought to how such a gain would require them to act if they were to be good men.

I realized today that the vaunted, lofty ideals of my liberal arts education are truly carried forth by few in this world. That is not a derisive moral judgment on my part; I understand that others have traveled different paths than I and perhaps understand certain things far better than I ever will. But as I work to pay my way out of this town, I must confront the fact that many people either do not or must not consider their actions beyond its immediate utility to them. They do not say, "What is required of me?" but rather, "What will this get me?" Perhaps that is the unfortunate fact of surviving in this world. Yet I believe such is the basic but vital root of problems that we see and try to solve only on the large scale.

Some cannot help this, for they have never been given opportunity to achieve such perspective. Yet even those who are educated, like my old friend and the orchard owner, fall short. It is education that we should vaunt, not the educated, for the educated may go out and make that terrible sin of squandering a good thing granted. But education, one of inquiring, considering, and reasoned critique, lies there, waiting patiently for those who choose to take it up and use it for what it was intended: to better human life, even if only one, by revealing the right and good way to live out one's desires and actions.

I'm trying to escape from this town, but I'm not wishing it so yet. Perhaps these guys were given to me so that I can see what I have been given in my education. And I hope that soon I can give something back.