It was a good plan and we even cleared the area around the pile to improve the conditions of work and promote safety. There were nails in the wood, so we wore gloves and safety glasses also briefly looked each panel over to identify any other potential hazards.
Once again, it’s a benign and somewhat dull story but it serves a point. Each of the actions described was raised in advance, discussed and modified as required to limit risk of injury and play according to the principles of No Journey Wasted, in minimising the effort required to complete the job. Also, once the task at hand had been planned out any misadventure could more accurately be called an accident. Without this thought, discussion and planning there was huge potential for stupid injuries which could not rightly be called accidents.
At times during the planning stage I wondered if we were making a bit of a meal out of it, but I can think of many misadventure and of people believing themselves to be the victims of circumstance where those involved pretty much asked for it. When you lay down all the pieces and figure out what happened, in any situation, there are layer upon layer of short and long range causes and effects. Only a supercomputer could reasonably plot the entire lattice of relationships, in even a mundane task, if a person tried they would probably only tie themselves in knots and never get anything but thinking about doing things done. But sifting through and identifying the salient factors is a peculiarly human ability and a most useful one at that.
Many times I’ve felt a bit pointless next to men of action, or women who jump in and get things done. Sometimes it’s a reasonable comparison, particularly when faced with someone of experience who can cut to the quick while you’re still assessing the task at hand. These guys know from experience where the wrinkles are and it’s good to have people like that around and to follow their lead, provided the results remain favourable. Sometimes the lead is taken by a dominant personality of limited experience and this must be resisted, unless a group action requires this kind of cajoling. I think it’s best to look and listen and develop your own ideas from this, drawing on whatever experience is available.
This story hasn’t developed into anything more exciting, has it? It was supposed to be inspirational but it reads like a Safe Work, Safe Home, Target Zero, One Accident is Too Many site induction. The point is that the right frame of mind will untie the knots of any problem and that most problems on a human scale are actually weak or skewed thinking made manifest. I’m not talking about Force Majeure here, there’s not much that a calm and inquisitive mind can do about an earthquake but if you can keep your head you’ve got a good chance of sorting most things on a personal scale out.
It seems to me that I’m always wandering off the track, chronically veering toward the hard way of doing things, like trying to fix stuff myself even when I'm out of my depth. Some of this is due to financial constraints but it’s also a bumbling attempt to gain some of Pirsig’s mechanic’s feel. Experience breeds understanding, understanding promotes confidence, confidence encourages positivism, in a general 'can do' kind of way. Trying leads, inevitably, to some degree of failing, failing opens up compassion and humility which I suppose, as I write, keeps confidence in check. Nobody loves a smartarse, right?
Jane and Poz on the Isle of Skye (2011)
