An Emboldening Philosophy

My High School Wooden Lamp Taught Me to Value Work

Have we forgotten or ignored the principles of building something?

‘GOING BACK’ TO SCHOOL

I was fortunate enough to attend a high school that made it required to take a woodworking class (it was known as ‘Tech’ class) among other classes including ‘Home Ec’ which was short for Home Economics. All students, girls and boys, had to take both. So the girls had to do the building just as the boys had to do the sewing.

Everyone would groan amongst their friends over the requirement, and at the time, it was a required class, so whatever it took to meet the minimum requirement to pass the class for some was their primary focus.

At the time, it certainly made you wonder why these sorts of classes were forced onto us. Real competitive students with their eye towards the ivy league schools of their choice were way more worried about their grades on exams for English, Science, Math, and History along with a second language and their selective extracurricular activities. These more extraneous homemaking type courses seemed like they should have just been electives and the fact that they weren’t just seemed like a waste of time in order to fulfill some administrative oversight.

I mean as a teenager, there wasn’t any thought as to the usefulness nor any future imagined in which we would use any of the skills learned from either class in any professional capacity. However, if I had to vote on whether the younger generations should repeat in taking up those required courses now, I definitely would vote ‘yes’.

As an adult looking back, I would certainly uphold this tradition in requiring such classes for future generations because although I didn’t realize it at the time, those courses (and the design behind them) taught us youngins to take pride in and have a deep appreciation for our own works — the kind of pride in the things that could be made by our own two hands by our own efforts; a different sensation that you can’t get from the modern age through computers or with relationships over various apps.

AMERICAN D.I.Y

Building and creating is an age old craft that spans cultures and generations. In current times, who hasn’t heard the title ‘content creator’ or the popular phrase to ‘create [quality] content’ which is based on producing things to say for blogging or to teach or show in videos on YouTube to generate clicks for affiliate links or views that eventually lead to a revenue stream based from Google AdSense or advertisers?

But in America, the original build was in our roots in surviving the vast natural landscape while heading West during The Gold Rush or settling and living off the land with hunting and agriculture. No doubt there were also 400+ years old of ugly U.S. history in slave agriculture as well, but — even then (not discounting the atrocity but the point being) — -the wealth of the landowners and the yields produced from the earth was by the toil of human strength, sacrifice, and forbearance.

Creating necessities (or even art) using wood or hunting or farming land for food to feed yourself and your family would be the kind of life lesson that forces you to realize the risks of irreparable spoil, or wastage, if not carefully planned, measured, and executed.

As an interesting aside, this clip of 3:32 mins was fun to watch by Animated Stats who has apparently created their animation based on the data from the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations):

‘Countries with the most arable land in the world 1961 to 2017’

If you didn’t do the work to plow and plant your seeds or if you got the seasons wrong or if the weather didn’t cooperate, it could mean no crops to sell or even starvation in the worst case. If the wood of the tree you just painstakingly chopped down, debarked, and now whittled it to perfect slabs or chunks to be used were to be misused or carelessly damaged, maybe even carelessly mis-designed, you’d have to cut down another tree — expend double efforts — to do it all again.

But in either case, you would in fact also do it again and again if you had to. If the situation warranted you to (drought or the wood split during the process of making something) — I mean just to live. There is a patience and awareness required to utilize prudently what you wish to produce and a drive that would also propel you to finish what was needed to be done; yielding the needed result by your own determination and physical fortitude for living and surviving. Women then would also have had it no easier either to take care of the house chores and raise the children during the early 19th century.

Yeah — those times sounds so far gone. We would now be more likened to the Roman Empire instead, but again, even in those times, arguably, blacksmiths and other craftsmen to make all those weapons for war were valuable for the very things that they could create with their skills from long experience and with the training over long duration by their own two hands.

So what’s my point?

We have so many modern conveniences these days and the idea of woodworking to make ourselves a desk or chair seems so strange when we are so used to driving up to IKEA or Costco, say, and buying the latest or greatest sale they have. We don’t think twice when we go and buy frozen or fresh chicken thighs or fruit from our local grocery. (Remember, in 2016, a British supermarket, Asda Stores Ltd., took a survey of 1,000 kids and over 40% didn’t even know where eggs or where their food originally comes from?).

What we tend to appreciate or value more are the things that took great efforts in building ourselves which applies to the intangible things too (like trust, friendships, endurance, etc.). My spouse said it once to me so perfectly as we were discussing about ocean pollution (paraphrased as I don’t remember the exact words),

‘We treat our resources like oil — pumping them dry — rather than treating them like trees (planting and growing them).’

Or that old saying, ‘Knowing the value of a dollar’ in reference to making money, is the same like knowing the value of good work with your hands.

I Can’t Help But See a Pertinent Political Reference Too

As it would also pertain to being a citizen of an amazing and free country, I’ve come to recognize from the past year due to COVID-19 and being awoken by the murder of George Floyd, that unless I participate more in the conversations of national politics and debate, my rights or my freedoms can be slipped right out from underneath my ignorance by others incautious or also ignorant or by the irretrievably corrupt. Either way, I can see how or why those who’ve fought before my time to grant me the freedoms I enjoy now would take very seriously about the defense of it than me from a later generation that has had the pleasures of it without my bloodshed.

It’s why we should be outraged that Americans are dying in crazy numbers from the viral pandemic due to mismanagement by the current administration. It’s why we also should hold our leadership responsible for reckless dishonor directly against our constitution.

It’s why I realized all those years ago, that the wooden desk lamp from Tech class we had to build from school wasn’t just a graded woodworking project and useful to stick on top of your desk but it also switched on a light bulb about preserving value in even the smallest of things that we took pains to produce ourselves.

My Memorial Day & constitutional references if you like interesting takes:

If you are not yet a Medium member and would like to show your support for me and my content, please consider becoming a member through me, here:

A portion of your membership fee directly supports my efforts in continually writing here but at no additional cost to you and without any changes to your membership — you still get full access to every story on Medium besides mine. But your support would make a real difference for a writer.

Thank you for reading!

© 2021 The Secret Aspirant. All rights reserved.