Sometimes questions aren't necessary

If you were to deconstruct a person’s history, you would have two things: facts and stories.

Facts are skeletal in nature. Everything rests on facts. Most lives can be pared down to just the facts. But then, nobody lingers with facts because there’s no flesh there, nothing on which to pin decorations of valor, no place to tuck our vulnerability.

Stories, on the other hand, are the containers that hold a life’s meaning. Stories are how we connect to one another, how we know we belong, or can belong, if only we choose to allow ourselves. Stories reveal our truest self.

Here’s a true story.

Today, I met a farmer. He, along with a son or two and a nephew or two, tills 3,000 acres of corn and soybeans, and finishes 14,000 hogs on a farm north of Jackson, Minnesota. Those are his facts.

I had business with this farmer today, business that could have been completed in about 10 minutes had I only been interested in collecting facts. Today, though, and everyday, really, I’m interested in stories. To communicate this interest, I ask people to talk about themselves and I listen, sincerely, intently, and, sometimes, courageously.

The farmer and I shook hands and I asked him to walk me around his property and tell me about his operation. Because he was polite, he obliged. Somewhere between the hog nursery and the corn dryers, the farmer handed me his story. HIS-STORY.

He’d been born and raised in the county. He pointed to the old homestead across the frozen field where he’d been reared, he and his brother. His brother had gone to Vietnam and returned. The two entered a partnership: Johnson Brothers Farms, they’d called it. One day, the farmer loaded a truck full of hogs and left for the processing plant, because, “we always deliver our own hogs” and his brother stayed behind. Later that day, his brother had a heart attack and died. The brother was 39 years old. It happened at home. “Passed away,” was the term the farmer used. Passed away.

The farmer’s brother left a wife and three youngsters, two boys and a girl. The widow moved into town and was fixing up a house for her and the kids. She and her father were standing on scaffolding doing some repairs to the house when the scaffolding suddenly collapsed. They both passed away because of the accident, he told me. Both of them, passed away.

Those kids lost both their parents within a year, the farmer told me. The farmer took the kids in, raised them, and now the two nephews were part of the operation which no longer is called Johnson Brothers Farms but just Johnson Farms.

Then the farmer told me he’s been ill. Seriously ill. The boys, his sons and his nephews pretty much run things now because of his illness, he said. He got his diagnosis at the Mayo Clinic on Sept. 11, 2001. “That was a memorable day,” he said, then he invited me inside.

Of course, I’d sought out none of this information when I drove four hours from my home to Johnson Farms. But the stories emerged nonetheless, and I decided long ago to be a generous listener because I know no one’s life can be, or should be, summed up in pure fact. Stories emerge from life and one’s legacy is revealed by stories. Stories can be found everywhere, even in the middle of nowhere. All that’s required to find them and hear them is to listen generously.