A Tip from the Toolbox

I keep a small and not very imaginative collection of tools on hand for small and not very imaginative home repairs, knobs on cabinets, lose towel racks, picture hanging and the like. Despite my repeated resolutions though, I can't seem to keep them all together in one place and therefore am unlikely to find what I need when I need it. I was thinking of this on a Saturday morning as I searched for a Phillips head screwdriver, vowing for the hundredth time to replace it in the tool drawer and half listening to public radio when I heard the following - I stopped in mid ransacking of a drawer and made a note of the words, struck by their directness and simplicity and knowing that like my tools, I might not be able to find them when I needed them.

If all you have is a hammer, then all you'll see is a nail......

I located the screwdriver, stashed in a bedside table - apparently the last place I'd used it - tightened the screws on the door knob and a hinge on the back door and turned the radio up a notch. Saturdays off are still fairly new to me and sometimes I'm not quite sure where to start. If all you have is a hammer, then all you'll see is a nail kept running through my head and I found myself distracted. I kept wondering how often tunnel vision had prevented me from seeing the simplest solutions, how many times had I let myself stay stuck out of fear of trying something new. You can waste a great deal of time with a hammer and a nail when a screwdriver is what you really need and when you think about it, there's no real reason to be afraid of a wrench or a pair of pliers. We use the tools we have because we have them and know how they work, but if they fail us or are simply wrong for the job at hand, it only makes sense to try different ones.

A tip from the toolbox - life is learning, exploration, coming of age, coming to terms, tripping without falling, falling and getting back up. Life is about using all the paints on the palette, all the voices in the choir and all the tools in the toolbox.