December 11, 2018
A Gift for Yourself: A Different Holiday List
An often used phrase this time of year is, “It is better to give than to receive.”
I believe that one common trait among Extension professionals is that they exemplify this phrase. We provide the people we serve with a highly treasured gift, a gift of empowerment. We empower and encourage them to help themselves by providing them the research, education, and facilitation they need to make decisions that improve their lives, livelihoods, and communities.
We provide this incomparable gift in a lot of different ways – too many to provide a comprehensive list in this article. Nevertheless, here are a few that come to mind. We:
• enable seniors to make better healthcare decisions, saving them and our healthcare system thousands of dollars in the process;
• help producers operating in a difficult farm economy to find ways to make their farms and ranches more viable, thereby better insuring a safe, secure and sustainable food supply
• assist community leaders to determine how to enhance the vitality of their communities and, in the process, potentially reverse their community’s depopulation trend;
• enable entire regions to decide how they will conserve and enhance their water supply, enabling future generations to have a bountiful and safe water supply; and,
• mentor youth to become future community, state, national and world leaders as they fulfill their first leadership duties as officers of their 4-H club.
Now, I am going to encourage each of you to give yourself a gift. I want you to think back and try to list all of the ways you have helped the people you serve this past year. My guess is that you will be unable to complete this list; your writing endurance will be far shorter than necessary to complete the list. That’s okay. I believe, even if the writing or keyboarding cramps physically prevent you from completing your list, there will be more than enough to make you go, “Wow! I really helped a lot of people this year.” That realization and the pride that accompanies it, may they be your gift to yourself this year!
Please also realize that I thank you for each and every item on that list you make, all the items on the lists you could have made in the past, and all of the lists you will make in the future.