Stepping out of school that day was the best thing that ever happened to me. I walked away from the wire fences, rigid rules, punishment by caning and strapping, and I was set free. So it was too when I first understood why amateurs had the better life, independence brought beyond peer pressure and authoritarianism. It was another of those, ‘I didn’t know I couldn’t do it, so I did it’ moments. They lived in the love of their woodworking, and it made no difference how good they were at doing it, or how very bad they were…they lived for the doing of it!
[…]These volunteers, and volunteers is indeed what they are, these entrepreneurs, these altruistics, pursue their quest for mastery no matter the obstacles they encounter. They willingly get together with other woodworkers, share their knowledge and skills, and band together to promote the art of what they believe in. Professionals tend to use the term amateur negatively, to draw a contrast between themselves and amateurs, even though, as said, amateurs might well be more knowledgeable, more dedicated and more skilful than any professional counterpart. Using the term derogatorily cannot really displace the essence and innocence of amateurism, so better to not distance themselves from the limitations of making only for money; many a professional will usually distance themselves from the term amateur as we have come to know it through the decades where most professionals fail to recognise the skills and abilities that carry the missing element in most professional realms and that is the significant ingredient we recognise simply as a love for the craft we do.
[…]All in all, I am an amateur woodworker and hope to be so for the rest of my life.
I would like these words engraved over my lintel:
When the love of craft inspires us, self-discipline takes us into the deep.
Much else to be appreciated in that piece — ie. eg. “With an assurance of a predictable result, your positive feelings parallel the mind’s intent of your thought processing”; and, “But it wasn’t until I abandoned the ease of machine making altogether that I truly understood how machines became fully, dictatorially rigid and fixed and hand tools delivered the greater freedoms of versatility in the high demand of minute by minute critical thinking.”
I’m also struck by the overlap with yesterday’s short video from Two Birds Film, “The Good Farmer.”
Long live the loving amateurs.