I currently work as an attorney, mostly representing indigent defendants or family members in abuse and neglect cases. Prior to that, for almost 20 years, I worked as a re-upholsterer, putting new fabric on old furniture. After my junior and senior years during and for a few years after high school I worked for various small re-upholstery shops and then when I was 21 I opened my own shop. My end clients were typically wealthy professionals or business owners, my immediate clients often interior decorators.
Being a re-upholsterer, like most of the “trades,” is for the most part not very respected or appreciated, which is likely one of the reasons so many of the trades are either no more or disappearing. People like to have beautiful, comfortable, and oftentimes unique upholstered furniture in their homes, and take pride in having such things, and love hearing compliments on how beautiful their homes look, but give little consideration to how those luxuries are produced, or the people that produce them. This reality is certainly not unique to re-upholsters. The same sentiments confront carpenters, painters, masons, plasterers, etc. And even electricians and plumbers.
One time, while I still had my re-upholstery shop, I was talking to a friend of mine from church who was in law school. He was telling me about another member of the congregation who was a lawyer and was having some mental health issues. My friend said something to me to the effect, “Having mental health issues as a lawyer is a big deal because lawyers work with their minds. Imagine if you had something wrong with your hands as an upholsterer, that would be a big deal to you.” I’ll never forget that little throwaway comment and the attitude it demonstrated. This attitude prevails in so much of our society, on the left and the right, rich and poor, unschooled, and highly educated. The attitude that there are those who work with their minds, and those who just work with their hands.
In reality, to do anything in this life well involves the engagement of your brain. Imagine an electrician that doesn’t engage their mind when wiring a house. What result would you expect? Imagine a mechanic working on your car who isn’t engaging their brain. Would you want to drive that car? If the painter painting your house is not engaging their brain t will be immediately noticeable. Any work “done with your hands” also involves the engagement of your mind. This is how the hands, and the arms and the legs and the feet and the fingers, and the brain work together. To do anything well requires such mindfulness.
And the engagement of the mind is not just at the moment the particular job is being worked on. Learning and mastering any craft involves the engagement of the mind in a concentrated fashion over an extended period of time. And patience and focus. Like anything else, some will learn faster than others but there is no alternative to “putting in the work.”
I was able to shut down my re-upholstery shop and return to school to become an attorney myself and I’m grateful for that. Running my re-upholstery shop for so many years entailed many long hours for very little pay, and the accumulative wear and tear on my body, particularly my hands and lungs, was beginning to be undeniable. But I will always be grateful that the Lord led me in the direction he did for the lessons and perspectives it enabled me to have as a re-upholsterer. Being able to take raw materials and to have the vision to seemingly create something of tangible beauty is an amazing feeling, much more rewarding at times than much of my work as an attorney.
I’ve come to believe, though, that the greatest gifts we have as individuals and as a society is not the material products of our labors, whether individually or collectively, but the talents and skills we’ve developed in creating our society, whether those creations are corporeal or incorporeal, material or spiritual. And the full engagement of the mind is essential in all these labors if they are to be done well.