Craft

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100’s of years ago before the mechanisation that the industrialised world brought to the human race, we were involved in work, art, music, or writing that involved craft.

We wrote letters with a quill dipped in ink on a scroll. We spent our time crafting beautiful letters.

We shaped wood into amazing things, we hammered iron into all manner of items, we made and created things with our hands, often made with joy and intimate knowledge and skill of how to.

Whatever we did it mainly involved concentration and often deep work with passion and feeling. It had a meaning.

In our world of email, social media, and instant gratification, we are desperately short of doing anything of meaning, substance and passion.

In order to fulfil ourselves and gain meaning to our existence, we need to add craft to whatever we are doing.

That requires attention and the removal of distraction. It needs us to learn focus and forget the shallow pings of the insubstantial world we have created.

Craft something remarkable and enjoy every moment.

There is a brilliant quote ‘we who cut mere stones must always be envisioning cathedrals’. We must envision something deeper rather than simply be adding yet another piece of digital content to the vast digital dustbin of much of the internet.

There is more.

Magpies

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There are things in life that we do, yet do we stop to actually think is there any value to it. Do we ask ourselves ‘what was the point of that?’.

Day-in, day-out our time is consumed with ‘doing’, we are busy.

That Facebook survey to tell us ‘who our best friend forever is’ or some repetitive work task that’s done because ‘that’s how we do things here’.

How much of our lives are we sucked into things, especially in a digital world, where we end up spending time on an activity that adds no value at all. It also creates a habit of being distracted by the next thing that comes along, so when we need to focus, we’ve lost the skill to.

Just because it’s there and we can do something does not mean that we should be doing it.

Our lives are precious, guard your time for deeper and meaningful things that make a difference. Don’t do ‘that’ and become a ‘magpie’ taken by the next shiny thing.