Boys’ get blisters. Men develop calluses.

When pressure is applied to an area of skin two outcomes is possible. The skin becomes irritated; eventually the irritated skin weakens and gives way to a blister. Or the skin becomes stimulates, eventually the stimulated skin strengthens and a callous is formed.

Boys’ get blisters. Men develop calluses.

As a young boy I wanted to prove myself a valuable man. So I asked my grandfather for work. He told me it was time to cut the ditch banks. By this time in the year the ditch banks couldn’t be burnt because the crops were to high and too dry.  

I followed my grandfather to the garage, a place I knew a tractor wasn’t kept. I laid my eyes on the lawn mower, a mini tractor would do just fine I thought, but to my surprise the mini tractor had no heart, there it sat without a battery. I was perplexed; my mind was questioning how I would do the job without a lawnmower or a tractor. At that moment my grandpa pulled out a weed-eater. Eventually the weed-eater was put away when we discovered it didn’t have any blades.

Simi relived I turned to walk back into the house, as I did my grandfather sifted through rusted antique tools that rested in a splinter filled 55 Gallon barrel. He pulled from that barrel an odd shaped golf club. With the sickle in hand my grandfather headed towards the ditch bank.

My 80-year-old grandfather explained what he wanted and with ease showed me how it was done. He handed me the tool and walked away.

The first hour I worked very little, my time was spent envisioning different ways the ditch bank could be cut. Eventually I realized my visions of a cut ditch bank wasn’t going to be done on it’s own.

The second hour I spend tangled in monstrous weeds, flipping and flailing, hacking and screaming at weeds. It was drudgery. Over and over again I swung in different directions, doing anything I could to try and level those thick powerful weeds. I was hopeless; although I worked I had no vision.

It was sometime between the second and fourth hour that my dreams found work, and my drudgery found vision. I started to cut; my flailing became focused, morphing into powerful swings. Precision accompanied my every movement. I saw in my minds eye a ditch bank with weeds cut to uniform an inch above the ground. My mind saw a job well done and my hands wanted to be the author of it.

I can’t remember how many blisters I had on my hands that day but I do remember the callous that began to form on my heart. 

“Vision without work is merely dreaming, work without vision is drudgery, but work coupled with vision is destiny.”     Thomas S. Monson