If I Were Different

~ This article first appeared in The Leader-Vindicator newspaper. ~

I have hit a ceiling in my daily activities.  I know what it is I want to accomplish but I have absolutely no idea how to do it.  The tension is killing me.

It is suspected that the next area of advancement for my agricultural existence lies in the realm of building, which helps explain why the progression is giving me so much trouble.  There are people who love to build and I gaze at their accomplishments the way a kid with training wheels on his bicycle looks at his friend who learned how to balance.  Guys tinker and invent in order to improve their passions.  They can build things of monumental ingenuity and put them to use with grand avail.

But me?  I can’t glue two boards together.  The art of precision so sufficiently eludes me that any task requiring, say, a measurement, is an inconvenience of magnitude.  If I need a socket it will take me most of a day to find the proper size and if a nail is mandatory I’ll have only screws.  Speaking of screws, I use power drills to strip their heads completely off and make sure to give me a board if you want it measured thrice and still cut too short.   I desire the results of building but, boy, do I hate the process.

Now, I have noticed that people who possess physical skills lack almost universally the ability to communicate.  I know a guy and his wife who operate a tannery – not building, of course, but a skill of the hands nonetheless – and wonderfully carry on an art that has been driven nearly to extinction.  Anyone with a whiff of concern for local craftsmanship should hold them in the highest regard.  Yet few people know the little tannery exists.  Skilled as he is, the man cannot communicate to save himself.  When he writes something the message is ineffective at best; twice now I have called in a panic because I believed the business to be closed down when in fact it is humming along nicely.  And the tanner is not alone in his muddled discourse; for examples of horrific grammar one needs only to go as far as the nearest farm auction.  A sieve passed through the conversation wouldn’t find a proper sentence.

Somehow I can write.  My ability to spin a tale is probably a byproduct of my horrible academic performance.  When I flunked something, which happened frequently, I needed a way to talk myself out of the conflict with faculty and family alike.  So I surfaced a method to maneuver: I discovered vagaries and expounded upon them in order to hide my complete ignorance of the precision required to test well.  Whether that makes me a survivalist or a liar, I don’t know.

Isn’t it funny that I have restricted ability to do things but better skill to tell about them, and people who do things are mutes in a world of speeches?  It seems a cruel joke that I can attract attention to my mountain of trash while the truly skilled can’t manage a glance.  Here lies proof that we’re created with healthy dependence for one another.

If I were different I’d choose the skill of building.  There is an aura of masculinity associated with effortless doing and I imagine myself creating quite a little utopia to live in if I could only get it done (I’d also add thirty pounds of muscle).

Then again, total self reliance flies in the face of that critical dependence hardwired into the core of humanity.  I suspect that I would find myself facing the same tension from the opposite direction if I traded one skill for another.  Being different doesn’t solve our problems; being connected does.

My daily complaint to anyone within earshot is that I need a builder who needs a storyteller.  They can construct and I can tell the story.  This seems such an obvious pairing it’s remarkable that people don’t gravitate towards the model instinctively.  Our separation is likely because everyone carries a mental scale used to tabulate who owes what to whom.  My scale is never balanced, but always tipped to the extreme.  Critical relationships are hindered because of it.

The apple blossom and the honeybee don’t chart who worked harder and therefore deserves more compensation.  Each contributes its skill and the result is fruit for someone else entirely.

I think it should be possible to identify a mutual target and then set about achieving it.  The target is not compensation, as the blossom and the bee demonstrate.  If the target is compensation then our work defines who we are and it will never be satisfying or long lasting.  Conversely, we define our work.  When people fit perfectly into their role everything clicks.  The person, so gifted, defines the role, and the role becomes important to everything around it.  The whole becomes strong.  The vision becomes reality.  And the resulting fruit is there for many others to enjoy, thus spreading excellence to a hurting world.

If I were different I’d be a builder.  Thank goodness the choice is not mine to make.