Been Thinkin’ About…Discipline and hope beneath the summer sun

The 6:30 Saturday morning alarm sounds, and I let it repeat three times before turning it off. In retrospect, choosing a song — and an Enya song at that — may not have been the best idea. The Irish artist's Forge of Angels keeps lulling me back to sleep. Had my Basset not begun pouncing on me and pretending to bite my nose, I would have been late to work.

I do have a few days a week I can sleep in but weekends are not included. The 10 a.m. opening time for the StateoftheOzarks Farmers Market on Saturdays at Vintage Paris Coffee Shop at — and I have now memorized the address for social media — "7900 Historic Highway 165 in Hollister just across from the Branson Scenic Overlook" means I need to be on site to guide arriving vendors no later than 8 o'clock. I drink espresso on my way to drink more espresso. The sun is bright.

We don't talk about working hard in today's world. It's like blood in the water to social sharks. "Must be nice." "Really, that's all you do?" "Shouldn't be too hard." "I work harder than that." I'm pretty sure people who say such things actually don't work that hard. The hard workers show respect, not disparagement. Mockery is the easy way out.

"The body should be treated more rigorously so that it may not be so disobedient to the mind. That's what Seneca said," Toriano is saying. His words ring true. One of our newest and most dedicated Farmers Market vendors, Toriano, is at Wednesday and Saturday markets, operating his Hometown Hot Dog business. Toriano's dedication makes a difference. While not alone in his consistency, consistency is not exactly the order of the day. In a world of flaky people, those who can be counted on stand out.

"Everyone is special, which is another way of saying no one is." The words were written for Dash Parr, one of the animated characters in “The Incredibles,” which is still one of my favorite movies. We have not benefited by making everyone winners. Merit counts, far more than we might imagine.

The sun is hot, the humidity high. The StateoftheOzarks Farmers Market has grown precipitously, each Saturday market feeling rather like a festival. We have 18 vendors this Saturday-after-Fourth-of-July. We have record attendance, proven by record sales. I begin to breathe more easily. My career is on the line with every event. Professional anxiety is the name of the game. An ever-present threat of failure drives me more than any personal development coaching program ever could.

Seneca — not the Algonquin people — was a Roman stoic. Stoicism isn't marketed heavily these days. Decadent societies in decline have little appreciation for the stoics. There's not much marketing money in self-control.

An unexpected summer cloudburst briefly drenches the market. Summer weather this year has been unexpected, unstable. I stand in the rain, in part because the cool feels good, but also to signal to everyone else what I believe — the rain will be brief. I'm right, but also soggy. The sun emerges and the humidity skyrockets. More people fill the market space. More sales, more happy people. I think my shoulders may be sunburning again. I don't really care. I tan easily.

I came to discipline by the back door, to be honest. I wasn't a responsible kid, but then again, most kids aren't. My mom was nurturing, but also dogmatic. I would be responsible, damn it. I would be smart. I would be successful. There was no other option. On the surface, we were a perfect nuclear family. In reality, my dad was elsewhere even when he was home. He spoke to me as little as possible. My mom seemed to intuit she had to be both a mom and a dad. "It's a good thing I was always a tomboy," she would say with a wry smile as she fixed fence in the summer heat. She made sure I finished whatever I started. She didn't make me a man. I had to do that later. But she surely pushed me hard in the right general direction.

Back home, the dogs are ready for their long walk. There's bookkeeping to be done, preparing for Sunday service, members I need to check in on, even a disgruntled person waiting for an email reply. Can't make everyone happy. If the sun is too low in the sky when the dogs and I head to the trail, we may be high-stepping over copperheads. At least I don't have to cook. Tee — another of our Farmers Market regular vendors — gave me some fufu and egusi to try. The flavors of the African dish are savory, earthy and with subtle tones of sour and bitter leaf and hot spice. Tee is someone else I have come to count on. She does what she says. Her faith is strong.

For me, those I work with are the real celebrities. They are the real people to be celebrated. They are the real reason — besides paying my mortgage and insurance and being able to buy food and increasingly cheaper gas — I get up in the morning. I don't need an airbrushed magazine cover to tell me someone is important.

Nihilism tells us that we are unimportant, that nothing is important. Our perceived unimportance is the easy way out and a strange form of lazy self-abuse. If we don't matter, then why bother at all? But our nation was built on the idea of the individual-in-community, the farmer philosopher, the warrior poet and the family man striving to leave a legacy built not to man but God. Deconstruction has not been kind to recent generations.

The sun has set. The moon glides through cloudy July sky. I've finished the bookkeeping, the devotional, the member check-ins. The dogs are sleeping on the couch, and the clock has ticked past midnight. Another 17-hour work day.

Entrepreneurs don't get a lot of time off. We just fall asleep after some point. Why all the effort? Because I like to eat. Also, because I believe in the Ozarks.

But I believe in an Ozarks ahead of us. A people guided by the past, yes, but we cannot live in the past even as we learn from it. One cannot live in a museum. I grow tired of the tediousness of Ozarks cosplay, as though we are all settlers, or staunch turn-of-the-century cowboys, or black-and-white Mayberry innocents.

Even the cosplay itself is a kind of two-dimensional pastiche.

In a few short hours, I will be pulling into an old church yard and probably 10 minutes late because sometime between now and then I will stare uncomprehendingly for a few too-long minutes, cup of espresso with heavy cream in hand. I don't go to church because I think I'm better than you. I go to church to remind myself that I'm not the center of the universe. There's a strange solace in that idea.

My spirituality is private but I also go to honor my people — my ancestral line — and my adopted people, a blue collar mountain people willing, perhaps, to walk with heads held high into a strange new century, perhaps walking away from the seduction of nihilism, willing to again embrace the rigor of discipline and hope beneath the summer sun.