“When you make something, when you go through the process – [through] all the steps – and at the end you have a finished product that you made out of your own hands, out of your own mind, [and] that is your own design, it’s a reflection of your own soul.” – Hollenbeck
AMONG the positive things that this pandemic has brought about is that it has made many people retrospect and realize their dependency on the “system”, and the corresponding lack of control they have over their lives or what they rely upon for their lives. Some are realizing the necessity of developing skills and craftsmanship, or growing their own food, or raising their own chickens and animals – in order to fall back on something, or at least reduce that dependency on the many wheels of the modern grinding machine. A few people already started on that road years ago who had the wisdom to see where the world was heading, but the pandemic has now brought many to think along these lines.
The emphasis that our children must be a “doctor” or an “engineer” or must be academically excellent or have a diploma form an institute of higher learning, and that otherwise that child is a failure betrays a superficial understanding of life and reality. Proliferation of professional white color jobs is but a relatively new phenomenon. For thousands of years, people have made their living on skills and craftsmanship. It is not that one is exclusively good and the other always bad, but the idea that all kids must be academically good and go for white color professional jobs is unfortunate. It is also sad as this mindset is bereft of other noble things that are important in life. Better a free-thinking self-sufficient craftsman who uses his own hands to provide for his family and live a humble, modest, happy, and dignified life than a top professional who is focused on high salary and a (purposeless) life of comfort, consumption, stress, and depression. (A fellow friend and doctor once told me that there is so much depression medicine prescribed in this country – one of the most advanced and wealthy nations in the world – that they better supply depression medicine in the city water system.)
There is dignity when one makes a living using the labor of his or her own hands. All the prophets where shepherds – which trained them to develop care for others and afforded them time to reflect – and some of them were craftsmen, Prophet David (as) being one of them.
I would like to introduce you to man named Eric Hollenbeck, founder of a successful woodworking company in Eureka, California, situated amidst the giant redwood forest. He was one of those “failed” kids who could not read until he was 15. Today, his company receives orders from around the country for custom and specialty woodworking needs. He also runs a school where he teaches craftsmanship to these “failed” kids who are at the “lowest rung of the ladder”, being rejected by the school system. He values dignity of labor, self-sufficiency, and freedom of thinking. He believes in re-use and less consumption. The oldest machine in his shop goes back to 1866, and the latest one is from 1948, the year he was born. What an amazing and unbelievable thing to know!
“They are great kids. There is not anything wrong with them. They are just doers, not sitters.” – Hollenbeck
“Every film that you ever make has two stories. What’s the film is about, and then what’s the film is really about. It’s about the pride of making something. It’s about the pride of doing it for yourself.” – Hollenbeck
“You take a spring, and you bend the coil’s spring. You can try to bend it back. and you can get it close. But you can never take the spring back to where it originally was. And that’s what happened to all of us: we got bent.” – Hollenbeck
“In the whole world there are only two kinds of jobs. There is a job that you take a shower before you go to work in the morning, and there is a job that you take a shower when you come home from work at night. And the world needs both of these.” – Hollenbeck