Character or Carpentry

A young lady was about to go running on a nearby track when she sat beside me on a park bench. We started to talk, and our discussion led to “what we were doing in life at that time.” I shared with her about my job as a carpenter and my love of painting. She told me about her job in finance, which she was no longer interested in, and how she wanted to do something else. Soon, we began a discussion on carpentry. I shared my thoughts of how “a good piece of carpentry needs to function well, be stable, and have an attractive design.” I look back at that day and think, “Maybe what we both were doing with our lives at the time was simply looking for a safe place to put our love.” My safe place at that time came from my art and the things I assembled with my hands, but truthfully, the “safe place” comes with “no assembly required.” This place is so often another human being. Still, even though they are preassembled, none of the components are “perfectly” assembled to be with those of another.

Whether it was myself or witnessing it in another at some point, we each need to rebuild, renovate, or refinish some part of our character if we want it to work with the uniqueness of another individual’s. These parts relate to how stable we are, how we function, and our overall design.