Woodworking (or Creation?)

Image from the Internet

Have you ever opened a new smartphone and considered what the undoubtedly Chinese man or woman looked like, who put it together? Are they happy with their work? Sad? Are they, like recent news reports inform us, actual prison labor?

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I have long worked in occupations where I shuffle numbers for the means to earn money. This has been greatly unsatisfying. I have desired to work at a job where at the end of the day I could point to something and say, "I made that" or else "I built that". Alas, all I can do is point at a computer screen and say "I shuffled those electronic digits".

The irony is of course that while complaining of having nothing to show for daily efforts, I would escape into role-playing games or video games as a hobby and truly have nothing to show for my life. I started to feel I needed a new hobby, a new occupation, and what inspired me was woodworking.

It may appear random, especially considering I last took a woodshop class in 7th grade, some near 30 years ago. In the interim, however, I have made myself handy at minor home repair and I do feel some satisfaction when I fix something myself, possibly because both sides of my family line contain craftsmen. And possibly this fact also ignites the desire to have something I can point to and say I have made or built. It is in my blood.

So, back to the point, I have taken steps, and come this January I will start woodworking classes and join a woodworking club of beginners, professionals, artists, and manufacturers. If it does not lead to a new career, it will at least afford me the skills to build something real and tangible in this life. Imagine how much more satisfaction I will effuse, and the meaning conveyed when (for example) on a Christmas morning I can present to my wife a rocking chair I built, rather than some trinket I merely had the good fortune to afford. You see, it it less about physical objects and more about the act of creation, the pouring of soul and effort into an act that has significance, not just for me, not just for who I might gift it to, but for those who might inherit it.

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Have you ever purchased a genuine antique and wondered who built it and why? Who has possessed it all these many years and what wonders or horrors did it bear witness to? Was it a gift to a loved one or an expression of longing to see something manifest that did not exist before?

-Brent

"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery