I ran across the dry soil with a mallet in my hand, sweat stinging the sunburn on my forehead. My coworker and I were out in the field, staking a site for a solar installation project for one of our best customers.
He’s a farmer in a tiny Idaho town: population 478. Life moves at a different speed out there. They work hard, but they’re not in a constant rush. They know that the best crops — and the best days — are built with patience and the right “recipe,” not frantic energy.
At one point, we climbed into his old workhorse of a truck. The backseat was full of dusty takeout bags and an actual shotgun — no exaggeration. He had to shuffle it all around to make room for us. “When you’re planting,” he said, “there’s not time for anything else.” The truck’s passenger rear door was damaged — couldn’t be opened — because of a farm accident years ago. He apologized for it, told us the truck was his “catch-all” — maybe a bit like an old friend he could always rely on.
We rolled down the windows, and he drove us out into the field.
Looking over at my customer — who has become a friend — I noticed something about him that day: he never once rushed. He was busy — farmers are always busy — but he still had time to laugh, to tell us stories, and to be fully present while we worked.
And the whole time, I felt my old instincts trying to take over.
For most of my adult life, I’ve been that guy who thinks he needs to prove his worth. The guy who’s always running — not because anyone asked him to, but because he believes if he doesn’t, he’ll disappear or fail. I’ve spent decades measuring my value by how fast I could move, how many hours I could work, how little I could ask for in return.
But that day out in the field, watching my customer and his way of moving through life, I realized something important: running didn’t save me any time. It didn’t make me more respected. It didn’t change the project’s outcome. All it did was feed that old, hollow need to prove something that didn’t need proving.
Thankfully, that realization settled in before the end of the day. As the sun headed toward the western horizon, I let myself slow down. I walked alongside my customer while my coworker followed slowly in the truck down a dusty irrigation canal road — farmers working the field across the water. We talked about the project, about life and family, about how much we’ve come to respect each other in the six years we’ve been working together. He once spent millions to settle a bad business deal that wasn’t even his — because he felt it was the right thing to do. His motto? “Always try to do right by other people, even when they’re wrong.” It’s not about letting yourself be taken advantage of — it’s about showing up with integrity, not performance. Honestly, I would never have known about that story if another customer in the area hadn’t pointed it out to me.
He doesn’t have anything to prove to anyone. Maybe that’s the lesson I’m trying to learn, too.
Spending your life running doesn’t increase your value. It just makes you tired. And the people who matter — the ones who see the real worth in you — they’re not the ones asking you to run in the first place.
These days, I’m learning a lot about what it means to be brave. One of the bravest things I can do right now is to let go of the need to prove myself. It’s to let myself walk. To trust that my worth isn’t something I have to earn with speed and long days (though sometimes, like farmers, long days are required). It’s letting myself be rooted here in the dust and sun — like a farmer tending a field, not because it’s easy, but because it’s enough.
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