This weekend, I watched a craftsman work. He didn’t mind the company.
His way of working struck me as careful, precise and unhurried.
As if he’d read my mind, he said: “I can work rapidly, quickly. But I don’t hurry.”
My Texas grandmother spoke of people and their ways — the idea being that the way people approach things is important.
I’m interested in the way people work and usually notice their habits, routines and schedules. But that’s just a part of it. Before some people pick up a tool, they bring an approach to their work — perhaps it’s something you sense in their demeanor or presence — that’s subtle but noticeable.
The poet William Stafford gets at that quality with these lines:
Wisdom is having things right in your life
and knowing why.
If you do not have things right in your life
you will be overwhelmed:
you may be heroic, but you will not be wise.
• Source: William Stafford’s poem “The Little Ways That Encourage Good Fortune” is in The Way It Is; Minneapolis: Graywolf Press, 1998, p. 141.
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