The Job Worth Doing . . . .

The job worth doing has many benefits.

When I was learning to become a carpenter, as a woman, it was hard to find a mentor even in the carpenter’s union. So when an older Native American carpenter said he would teach me, I was humbled and honored. Benny was one of the finest craftsman in the region.

Benny was a philosopher as much as a carpenter. As he taught me how to set huge oak doors and later metal framework for windows, he was teaching me not just carpentry, but millwork, custom-built framework, cabinets, desks, built in place. The millwork was essential because we were putting mostly square offices into round steel tanks that had previously been used to hold water or petroleum products. This created some odd shapes, most of which were just slightly out of plumb and not quite square. Our goal was to make them look square and plumb by creating custom framework and cabinets and other office furnishings.

As Benny taught me to measure and hand-craft specific angles for cuts in rather expensive wood, he also asked me questions: he made me think. He was as much a philosopher as a carpenter. Learning to handsaw precise cuts at odd angles was paired with conversations about value and quality and one’s place in the universe—one’s purpose in all one did—doing work that means something.

Those conversations often took me back to my early childhood when learning to do a task. Once when cleaning my room, I had shoved everything under my bed and pulled the bedspread over the edge of the bed to cover it all. When my mother told me how good the room looked, but then lifted the bedspread up, revealing my dolls, books, papers, cars, and other childhood paraphernalia, she would simply say, now, do this part, meaning under my bed. I’d wail and bemoan my situation, complaining that my friends were waiting for me outside. Do it again, she’d say. When I complained to my dad, he’d say, a job worth doing is worth doing well. Every time I had to clean my room, the same song and dance ensued.

I finally learned this lesson when I had to teach my own daughters to clean their rooms. Yes, I was a late learner, but we often learn more through teaching than studying a subject.

And when, decades later, listening to Benny discuss the finer points of why it is important to do the job right the first time, I finally understood. My name was on that work. For as long as that door was there, that window or shelf or cabinet or table was in place, it mattered that it was precisely fit together. It mattered that people could use these things for decades and longer, and they were just as sturdy twenty, forty, sixty years later as the day we finished building them. It wasn’t enough to simply be precise, but it was a matter of heart, of spirit, flowing into the work, making it come alive. A craftsman or craftwoman is one who not only works with their hands, and also their heads, but ultimately with their hearts.

We put ourselves into whatever we do. That work is a mirror of our hearts, of who we are. When I think of those essential workers in the hospitals, I realize that they could not do what they do unless they put their whole hearts into it. To care for someone who is struggling to live requires getting things right. They have found a job worth doing, and they are doing it well—wholeheartedly. A part of their hearts goes into every touch, every word, every chart note, every patient in their care.

Bravo! Brava! to one and all.