The H.R. Doctor is In - April 18, 2016

The Joy of Life Renewed

Imagine an author dictating an article that looks exactly like this one while uncomfortably dripping with sweat. Sounds attractive, doesn’t it? However, it is all worth it as I look out the window at a lovely job of mowing three-and-a-quarter acres of pasture with help from my friend John (John Deere, that is).  

Later there will be a wonderful early evening walk through the pasture with the beautiful HR Spouse Charlotte and my two canines demonstrating their boundless energy. 

Hardly any mowing gets done during the winter in Central Florida. Last week though, a look outside the window and a check of the coming weather forecast led to the conclusion that the time had come. Spring has returned to beautiful “Sanctuary.” The flowers were emerging everywhere, the bees rather loudly buzzing through our bottle brush trees, and there was a loud proclamation from Mother Nature that there was much more beauty to come.

What a glorious time the spring is. Throughout human history the return of the signs of new life are times of magic. The almost-dead-looking vineyards in the northern hemisphere suddenly become incredibly beautiful and full of promise. The azalea bushes lined up along the side of our barn are vibrant. Our 50 rose bushes are vibrant. 

The same may be said of the seasons of calving or lambing, of new puppies or even the birth of the next generation of rodents. Who could witness this renewal of life and not want to celebrate? However you look at the spring, it is truly a time of celebration and sharing with people you love. 

We celebrate the miracles of nature as we have for thousands of years. It may call out memories of Greek or Roman mythology as well as the sagas and festivals which pre-date even those civilizations. 

The rebirth of life is, and always has been, the centerpiece of all of the world’s religions. They all share concepts like a renewal or return of life after apparent death. Certainly Easter fits well into that tradition. Passover does as well in terms of a release from bondage and the promise of a bright homeland and a future. 

As an avid astronomy buff, the HR Doctor recently enjoyed an email from a good friend reminding me that many techno-physicists would argue that reason for the season may be found in the tilting of the Earth’s axis 23.44 degrees. While the earth orbits around the sun, the vernal equinox jumps out at us as the axis tilt gets us to the date when the length of daytime equals (approximately) the length of nighttime. 

Having a good relationship with our average star gives us warmth and generates the chemical processes that allow us all to exist. It lets us return each year to the joy of spring as we watch things come to life around us. The equinox signals us that winter is fading into the distance and brighter, warmer times are ahead. We survived the cold and darkness of the winter.

Even in a bureaucracy, things can be reborn during the spring. As my fellow bureaucrats look ahead to the next budget season or plan for the last quarter or two of the fiscal year they are really looking ahead at what will be coming their way. This is a time of hope — which is the fundamental reason for adopting a budget in the first place. 

Of course, budgets do come with spreadsheets and auditors galore. Yet a budget is more than simply a collection of spreadsheet cells neatly filled in or a set of income tax forms prepared in a timely way. A budget is fundamentally a document of anticipation. It is an optimistic statement that the kind of services the government agency offers will continue, perhaps grow or shrink, but always providing opportunities to help other people in their lives, safeguard them or explore new, more efficient and more cost-effective ways to do business. 

Perhaps it is a good time for public agency managers to gather the people they work with together, offer them fresh spring flowers (not bought at public expense, of course!), and conduct a Hope workshop. The session would focus directly on how those staff members might generate ideas to do things with more efficiency, more fun and more appreciation for the value of their work. 

A Hope workshop sounds like something far more enjoyable to attend than another in a groaning series of weekly staff meetings. 

On the other hand, it likely does not compare well to walking through a lovely pasture with someone you love, admiring the purple and yellow flowers and watching robust canines wrestling, frolicking and wagging their tails!