some slogans stay with you

As I was scrubbing the inside of our old apartment yesterday afternoon, sweat poured down my back and prompted a voice inside my head to ask, "Why in the world are you cleaning the top shelf of a cabinet after you move out when you never once cleaned it before or during your residency here?"

It continued, "If your husband was here, he wouldn't do this much work. So why should you?"

I tried to bat it away and get back to work, but it persisted. "You never noticed any of this stuff when you moved in - the next leasers won't either. And neither will the landlady. Let's bust outta here and get to some AC, pronto."

"I'm doing this because it's the right thing to do," I informed the voice. "Doing things like cleaning when I don't want to make me a better person."

Of course the sly voice countered immediately. "There are lots of other things that you could be doing right now that will make you a better person. Going home to your new place and cleaning there, for one. And starting dinner. And working on your schoolwork - you haven't done that since Thursday! And this is also interfering with your running time - and you're a much better person when you've gotten your workout in."

So as I moved on to wiping down the pantry, I pondered why the heck I was working so hard. And I realized it's because an old (unofficial?) 4-H slogan had stayed with me throughout the years:

Leave things better than you found them.

At first I couldn't remember if this was something my mom or Kathy (another 4-H mother) had drilled into us. Then it started coming back. Doing pizza fundraisers in the church basement was lots of fun - until cleanup time. Then we wondered aloud why we were scrubbing this counter or those dishes when (1) we hadn't gone near them and (2) they hadn't been cleaned in years anyway. And the camp memories! Somehow we were always sweeping under bunkbeds that the previous camps had ignored the first month of summer. And someone had to get the cobwebs out of the chapel.

"It wasn't this clean when we got here" was not a valid argument. Just try it and you'd hear the refrain - "Leave things better than you found them."

The official 4-H motto is To Make the Best Better. The official slogan is Learn by Doing.

And boy did my dad embrace that second one! It made no difference that he had never been a 4-Her (my mom and grandmother had been). Learn by doing suited his style to a tee. Anytime one of us kids tried to beg off from a task because we (supposedly) didn't know how to do it, "What's the 4-H slogan?" is what we heard. "Learn by doing" we'd answer with a groan, and go get the screwdriver or flashlight or whatever was required for the task at hand.

I got really tired of having those things pounded into me, but in my wise old age (ha!), I have to say that I'm really glad they did. It's more than just knowing the right thing to do. It was also having adults who would model the right thing for us. It would've been a lot easier for my dad to just fix something in my car himself, instead of dealing with his daughter whine the whole time she attempted it. It would've been a lot easier for the parents to just ignore dirty corners and leave our meeting places in the same state they entered them. But they were right there laboring alongside their children to make things better and help them learn to do so as well. They really were the ones that brought the 4-H pledge to life.

I pledge my head to clearer thinking,
my heart to greater loyalty,
my hands to larger service,
and my health to better living,
for my club, my community, my country, and my world.