Hooray for Elaborate Radiators

We find all sorts of cool junk at the metal salvage yard. This past weekend I found two large radiators sitting in the sun. I was struck by the craftsmanship on something which may go totally unnoticed by most people. Yet someone took great care to make a utilitarian item look amazing. They took pride in their work and didn’t care whether people see it as beauty.  It mattered to the craftsperson that they created amazing, unique and beautiful work even if no one else noticed.

I thought about how this pride in a job well done is being lost. The time it must have taken to make these radiators look amazing is time well spent; yet the art of this kind of patience and commitment to beautiful work is slowly leaving us. Instant wants and instant results have left us being okay with something that lasts a few years and when it wears out we will simply replace it with something new. We forget that craftsmanship takes time and energy, attention to detail and pride in a job well one. The years and years of experience and expertise this metal worker needed to have to create these are a dying art. We are too busy with other things to be bothered with creating.

By not being committed to beauty and the time investment of creating amazing work,  it leaves us as people a bit less. By not wanting to take the time to create we also lose the value we could bring, the depth of character we would develop and the self confidence that we are able to work and build something that will last. We lose the lessons learned about ourselves and our abilities. By not doing and spending time making things we lose the people we could have been. We let the opportunity to become a better version of ourselves pass us by, simply because we are too busy or too lazy to work the hard.

There is a pride in craftsmanship, and not just in the final product. There is a pride in knowing you can do it. There is a self satisfaction in knowing you made something out of nothing. And there is a joy that envelopes any creative person when they can share the how, and the why, and the what of how they create. By not taking the time or being too busy to do this anymore we lose the depth of ourselves and an inner enthusiasm or opportunity to be our own best fan.

So hooray for elaborate radiators. Hooray for the craftsman who created these so long ago. And hooray for the person who rescues them from the dump and repurposes them into something amazing. Hip hip hooray for a job well done, no matter how long it took. Take time today to see the beautiful work around you, even if it is a chair or a piece of hallway art, or a hand crafted pot. Pause and think of who made it, how they made it, and who they became in the process.