Blog 2136 – 08.01.2021
Whatsoever Your Hands Find To Do
There is such a feeling of accomplishment doing it yourself, completing a hard or time consuming difficult task with your own hands. Many do not have the patience to complete complicated tasks themselves and so choose to pay a much high price to have them done by others. There will always be hand work to be done and for a good wage for those willing to do and complete detail work.
A finish-carpenter always gets paid more than a rough-in carpenter. Women are often more detail oriented than men and seem to have discovered better the importance of the little things. The nineteen-fifties song, Little Things Mean A Lot, it still as true today as it was long ago when it first came out. In an age of emails and texts it is still quite a thrill to get a handwritten note and celebrity autographs are still treasured by fans around the world.
Want to feel like a true celebrity? We all are really to Someone. Stars shine brightest at night, contrasted against the dark sky, and it is those who take the time and make the effort to do and complete any task with their own hands that become recognized as professionals, experts, artists, or accomplished “great deed doers” as the Wizard of Oz put it so eloquently.
And that someone would think a task being done by hand is so difficult that it couldn’t be done should make it all the more tempting to try. With our machines, high tech, and mass production what we have gained in “stuff” is immense, but what we have lost is too often the sense of satisfaction of a job well-done by our own hands. I daily repeat in my ever growing mantra, “May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in my sight, oh lord, my strength and my redeemer.” But, from this day forward I intend to add, “May I each and every day complete with my own hands the tasks set before me.”
Pride is often listed as one of the Seven Deadly Sins but cheating ourselves out of a sense of accomplishment is to me a far bigger “miss of the mark” or sin.
One of my dad’s favorite poems next to “I Met A Little Elf Man Once” was the poem, “It Couldn’t Be Done.” Read it below and you will understand why. My dad was a Seabee in the Navy during World War 2 and the Seabee motto is: “Can Do!”
Your friend and fellow traveler,
David White
High Hopes
Authors Note:
Yesterday, I spent three hours on top of my little house on wheels replacing a fan motor in my A/C unit with my own hands. It was a challenging tasks with many important details and several unforeseen difficulties as working on old equipment always has. But I completed the task, cleaned up, put away my tools, flipped the 20 Amp breaker back on, then the A/C switch and it worked without a squeak. I am still smiling with that cool feeling of accomplishment. Don’t cheat yourself, or say “I am no good with my hands or with tools.” I see you mastered that knife, fork, and spoon just fine.
theencouragingword 