Working with Our Hands19 Jan
When I began this blog discourse, I did so without any grandiose ideas about influencing the great web dialogue, changing any small course of history or adding a bigger, more important ripple to the pond. There are a Babel of voices that make up this net. No I am instead stepping into the great ether, as others have, to share my thoughts, opinions, and topics that I think might interest others.
Please know that these musings carry no weight of doctrine or stamp of approval from any source. Take it as seriously as you like but please understand the limitations of language when it comes to raising an eyebrow in a phrase or placing a wink in a sentence. Perhaps it’s just the limitations of my own language.
One theme of this blog that I do hope you will notice is my expressed and fervent belief in the value of working with our hands. That somehow this activity transfers far more than blisters to the bearer. That working with our hands, the very physical act of making things by hand, is by its very nature restorative, contemplative, and centering in a way that computers can never mimic. No matter how good one is on Guitar Hero or Grand Theft Auto, the act of building actual things carries a benefit with it that is hard to quantify with a score. But it serves to touch on something inside of us that is for lack of a better word, primal.
We need to be touching things. We need to be makers. It’s what got us here with all the abundance that surrounds us. So if we retreat a little to our shop and the small world of our bench, it is done with the kindest of intentions. To make a little peace with ourselves and thereby with the world. Both could use some work. Have fun.
