Do it Anyway

Lessons from the Green Beans

By Dr. Susan Fisher with The Lukeion Project

The original title for this piece was "Tales from the Pressure Canner," for that’s where the story begins.

This summer we had a bumper crop of green beans in the garden, and I decided it was finally time to put aside my fear of explosions and use my pressure canner for the first time. I won’t bore you with the humiliating details of my canner-side vigil, and the parting texts to friends whom I was sure I would never see again. The upshot is the beans came out fine and the house is still standing. A few weeks later when I canned my next batch, I was much calmer and that is where this blog post began – literally in a chair next to the pressure canner on the stove.

Just like most people, as I watched the pressure valve on my canner, I was thinking about Cato the Elder. Ok, that first part was a joke, but I really was thinking about Cato the Elder, an influential senator and historian of the early Republic, whose work and thought influenced statesmen and orators like Cicero and many others. He was also known as Cato the Censor for his strong opinions, particularly about self-reliance, hard work, and discipline.

While it is easy to dismiss Cato the Censor as a cranky old coot, with an overly starched toga who shook his noble fist while shouting at kids to get off his lawn, he does make some good points. First and foremost is the point that all of us, young or old, ancient or modern, cranky or not, tend to slack a bit when things get too easy. To be fair, we are animals after all and all animals lean toward slacking, since moderating energy expenditure is imperative for survival. Since this is a natural inclination, it falls to the vigilant like Cato the Elder to periodically remind people of the dangers of kicking back too much.

As the valve jiggled back and forth at ten pounds of pressure, I thought how easy it would have been to give in to my fear of learning pressure canning and just freeze the beans, pickle them, or not grow so many in the first place. Green beans are plentiful in Ohio, after all, and it is much easier just to get them at the store. However, this is just the sort of danger against which Cato was warning. Had I given in to my fear of the pressure canner, I would not have learned a new skill, nor would I have some nice quarts of green beans for this winter. 

Feeling smug that I hadn’t gone the easy route where the green beans were concerned, I started thinking about other areas in which, by Cato’s reckoning, I might have slid into slackerdom and was thereby missing out. This mental inventory led me to three pertinent questions for myself and others for determining whether one is taking the easy route to their own detriment:

• When is the last time you tried something new?

• When is the last time you tried something scary? (I’m not talking about alligator wrestling here, although if that’s your thing, then more power to you. I’m talking about things that people do regularly that you have psyched yourself out about.)

• When is the last time you told yourself you were incapable of doing something?

If you answered “a long time ago” or “I can’t remember the last time I tried something new” for questions one and two and/or “yesterday” for question three, odds are that you have given in to fear, laziness, or inertia and are on the road to becoming soft. (I can hear that overly starched toga rustling from here.)

Luckily you don’t need a crusty old coot of a Roman to point his bony finger in your face to get you back on the straight and narrow. Three words will do the trick. Grab a pen and write these down: Do it anyway.

• This is new – I don’t know how to do it! Do it anyway.
• I know that this is safe, but I’m scared. Do it anyway.
• There are so many sentences here to translate. Do it anyway.
• I might make a mistake. Do it anyway.
• It would be easier to get my answers off the internet. Do it anyway.
• I left this assignment until the last minute, and I’ll never finish in time. Do it anyway.

“Do it anyway” is the key to shutting down all the excuses that allow you to cop out, give up, or take the easy way out. More importantly, these three words are also the key to guaranteeing success, new skills, and growth. Do it once and you might have some quarts of green beans. Keep at it and you’ll have character, of the sort that would make Cato the Elder very pleased indeed.