“Where Corn Don’t Grow” by Travis Tritt is one of my favorite country songs. It tells the story of a young man getting ready to leave home and spread his wings. As he is preparing to leave, he asks his dad does he ever dream of a place “where corn don’t grow?” meaning does the father ever think of a place where trouble, hard work, and the everyday challenges of life are not an ever present reality.

The wise father tells the boy, “Son, I know at your age you think this old world is turning slow. But, hard times are real and there’s dusty fields no matter where you go.” , hands the boy an old pocket watch, gives him a hug, and watches him set off for some place “where corn don’t grow” with tears in his eyes.

Then the song relays several times over the years in which the now young man experiences “hard times and dusty fields” along the road of life in the big city, eventually getting into trouble with the law and ultimately coming home with a new perspective and having realized that the words spoken by the father many years before were true.   The song reminds me greatly of the story in the Bible of the prodigal son who also wanted to spread his wings and go out on his own only to ultimately realize his mistake and returning home a broken man with nothing except his life.

But maybe the real story in both the song and the biblical story is the role of the father who tried to give  their best advice to their children, only to have the advice ignored with the resulting “hard times and dusty fields” being experienced.  In both cases, the fathers welcome home the children who have experienced the hard times and dusty fields, both much wiser men than when they started on their journey.

As a father myself, I can identify with the feelings of the fathers in the two examples. I tried (and still try on occasion) to give my adult children and now my grandchildren thoughtful, good advice, hoping to help them avoid the hard times and dusty fields of life. Sometimes the advice has been received and followed while other times it has been ignored with the resulting “hard times and dusty fields” showing up just like in the song.

Now before someone says, “Well ain’t he just the most self-righteous person in the world acting like he is the most wise, all-knowing person around giving advice.”  I can guarantee I also ignored lots of great advice about “hard times and dusty fields” from Quincy and Gertrude Lee a few years back and most assuredly would have been better off at times to have heeded their advice.  But, just like the young man in the song, I too discovered that indeed there are dusty fields where ever one may live.

My mom used to tell me that every tub has to sit on its on bottom. I believe the meaning she had in mind when she said this was we as humans are a hard headed and stubborn kind of beings and do not really learn as much as we should from the experiences of others.  Heck, we often do not even learn from our own mistakes or lessons, much less learning from watching others.

But our desire as parents is to help our children, grandchildren, and others we love avoid experiencing hard times and dusty fields.  Thus the dispensing of advice, solicited or not, as they strike out on their journey of life, wishing we could open up their heads and just pour the advice into them with the same understanding that we possess which, ironically, was most often gained by experience and not by having been told by someone.

So, when you have chance to give out a little well intentioned and thoughtful advice to someone, don’t be too surprised if they do not fully acknowledge or heed it.  Though our desires, especially as parents, is to help our children avoid all of the hard times and dusty fields of life, we are just not wired that way. We tend to learn best from our own experiences in spite of the desires of others that we learn through their mistakes or knowledge.

Hope you all have a great week. Stay out of them dusty fields and hope you do not experience many hard times in the days and weeks ahead.