My Friday morning yoga instructor, Natalie, opened class recently with a line that stopped me in my tracks:

“You have a right to perform your duties, but you are not entitled to the fruits of your
actions.”

In simpler words:
Do the work — and let the rest be.

Funny thing is, I didn’t need a yoga mat to learn that lesson.
I learned it on the farm in Stokes County.

Yes, we raised tobacco — but that was just one piece of it.
We planted big gardens that fed our family year-round.
We grew feed corn for the animals.
We fed the hogs and raised them for meat, and as the old saying goes, we used every part of the pig except the squeal.
We snapped and strung green beans by the bucketful.
We hoed, picked, shucked, fed, planted, harvested — and then did it all over again the next year.

And when you grow up farming, you learn early that control is mostly an illusion.

You can’t control the rain or the drought.
You can’t control the heat, the frost, the worms, or the timing of anything.
You can’t control how the garden produces or whether the corn stands tall in July.

All you can control are your hands, your effort, and your attitude.

As best as I remember it, that’s how my Dad Joe, Uncle Obie, and the older folks lived.

We planted the tobacco.
We tended the garden.
We snapped green beans until the bushels disappeared.
We fed the hogs and watched them grow from little pink runners to smokehouse hogs.

We did the work — sunrise to sunset — but we never knew what kind of year we’d have until the end.

Some years the tobacco brought a great price per pound at auction.
Some years my dad and uncle hauled it back home to the smokehouse to wait for the
next week, hoping the prices got better.

But every morning, without question, we went right back out and worked the same.

Nobody asked, “Is this going to be worth it?”
Nobody stood around worrying about the outcome.
Nobody waited for perfect conditions.

You just did the work — because the work itself was the point.

And that’s exactly what Natalie’s yoga teaching means.
It’s not about giving up on your goals.
It’s about letting go of the illusion that you can control the harvest.

Life works the same way.

You raise your kids with love — but you can’t control every path they take.
You work hard — but you don’t control every break or setback.
You pray — but you don’t control when the answer comes.
You love people deeply — but you don’t control how long you get to keep them.

You just keep doing the work.
With faith.
With consistency.
With gratitude.
And with an open hand.

The older I get, the more I think the farmers had it right long before yoga teachers put it into Sanskrit:

Do the work.
Stay faithful.
Let God handle the harvest.

We didn’t call it a mantra back then.

We called it life.

As Best As I Remember It.