Slowing down for a couple of weeks, taking time away from externalities/stuff, cocooning in the family, and now coming back up for air, thinking about the work. It always come down to the work.

But just what is work? Very easily, it is stuff. Stuff is proof of work, it is value’s veneer.

More complicatedly, work is meaning. Work is the weight of things, the heft.

Work is craft.

I am trying to slow down at work, where I usually work with velocity. I want to give more effort to the craft of the work, the complexity and uniqueness of each touchpoint. This was brought to mind watching a light and deep video on creating twine(!)

“You know children grasp first an item and then they grasp with their mind. So if they have very little to grasp other than plastic readymade toys then what their mind grasps is very little.”

Craft is fruitful, often is surprising ways. Work as busyness, contrarily, destroys that fruitfulness according to Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander by Thomas Merton

“There is a pervasive form of modern violence to which the idealist…most easily succumbs: activism and over-work. The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence.

The frenzy of the activist neutralizes his (or her) work… It destroys the fruitfulness of his (or her)…work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.”

So I am trying to slow down, to be more present, more fruitful, to consider my craft. Via Omid Safi, the Prophet Muhammad said

Have your heart be

Where your feet are

 My head too…

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