Working with our hands

I'm reading an awesome little book right now, borrowed from the library called "A Different Kind of Luxury. Japanese Lessons in Simple Living and Inner Abundance" by Andy Couturier. When I saw the title, I was immediately drawn to it. This is exactly what I think about all the time, exactly what we try to tell people why we do what we do, and exactly what we are striving for. Simple Living and Inner Abundance. I always admired ancient Japanese culture of respect and wisdom that we in Singapore, is completely lacking. We seem to be horrendously unwise. With all due respect to our parents and grandparents who love us and brought us up the best way they know how... a lot of it is really misguided. Don't want to get into a list of things right now. But definitely one of the things... is how we did not at all encourage our children to work with their hands, and instead, focused on just academia. Anyway... I will just quote this from the book which sums up what I want to express. The context here is the writer of the book, asking Osamu Nakamura, self-sufficient man who lives alone in the woods who does wood block carving and booking binding for enjoyment - if it nerves him that a small mistake he makes can mean he will have to start everything over again.

"A crafts-person's job if half meditation, half creation. It takes creativity to design whatever you are working on, but it takes meditation to do it right. Making things with one's own hands cultivates a certain generosity and openness of the heart. It nourishes that state of mind in the crafts-person themselves, which is intimately connected with an entire way of life." Hearing this I am reminded, with sadness, of the epidemic levels of depression in my own country, and wonder whether it might have something to do with the aversion we have to working with our hands. For people in industrialised socierties, perhaps the problem is not that manual labour is intrinsically unpleasant, but that we get frustrated because our attitude is one of resentment toward something demeaning. Viewed differently, however, such work presents us with an opportunity to know ourselves and the physical and natural world better by exploring this essential aspect of being human: our relationship with our hands. How funny it is that one of the fundamental definitions of being "modern" is the ability to avoid physical labour, when it might be that very thing that could provide us with such depth of connection to ourselves and to the world.""

Very well said.

And very sad indeed as well.

I just feel so incredibly blessed that I now know better. And I leave you some of the wonderful things we got to do by hand at Old Chapel Farm....

Picking dandelion in a field of... well, dandelions to make wine

Turning the bed over to plant fresh crops

Where do you think milk comes from?

Resting after planting this bed of young tomatoes

Green bean chutney I made

My gate almost finished

Posing for a photo after our 2 day basket weaving course