Log Off and Build Something
Working with our hands keeps us sane in a digital world.
I’m building a fence to keep deer and groundhogs out of my vegetable garden. That’s my primary goal; I’m tired of having my lettuce and tomatoes vanish just as they’re ready to pick. But building a project like this has benefits far beyond practical utility. After all, if I were trying to be practical, I wouldn’t have a garden in the first place. I can buy vegetables at the store with much less fuss.
My fence is no modest undertaking. Supported by steel poles sunk in concrete, it stands nearly eight feet tall. Its tough plastic mesh is held up by a steel-core monofilament line and anchored with stout rebar stakes. Any critter that manages to break into this walled garden deserves a role in the next “Mission Impossible” movie. All that’s missing are some laser-beam motion sensors.
Why do people like me go to all this expense and trouble? Because working with our hands is part of what makes us human. No other animal has the dexterity—or the brain power—to conceive and build complex structures. Don’t talk to me about birds’ nests and spiderwebs. That’s genetic. Just as it is satisfying to master a challenging sport, there is something deeply rewarding about using your skills, your mind and sometimes your strength to build a useful thing.
These days, we outsource most hands-on work to experts and industry. Very few of us could build a house, and there’s no single person alive who could build a smartphone. And that’s fine. As Adam Smith showed, without the division of labor, we’d live very meager lives. But we lose something when we disconnect entirely from the hands-on world—when any object we desire is a click away on Amazon, and even our meals arrive by DoorDash instead of from our own kitchens. There’s more to life than being a consumer.
Meanwhile, our culture is awash in a sense of anomie and grievance. Many people resent being dependent on global supply chains and megacorporations. They think “late capitalism” is to blame for their feeling of alienation. Some retreat into sad, secondhand lives of phone scrolling and Netflix binging. Others find a pathetic thrill in “microlooting” from chain stores. A few embrace the unhealthy passion of radical politics.
There’s a simpler solution. You don’t need to exile yourself from the global economy, nor should you want to. But you can step off the conveyor belt of cheap disposable products and drug-like digital distractions. Express your individuality by creating something for yourself now and then. Get your hands dirty.
Even as he wrote prodigious volumes of history, Winston Churchill took time to learn the craft of bricklaying. In the 1920s, the great man built a tidy cottage for his daughters. He recorded with pride how he laid down “200 bricks and 2,000 words a day.” That’s a high bar but a good goal for us all. Last week, Free Expression’s Mary Julia Koch wrote about the benefits of hobbies, noting that they “build mental muscles we wouldn’t otherwise use.” That’s the internal reward. But when we make something from scratch—a scarf, a bookshelf, a garden—that thing also lives on in the external world, enriching both our own lives and those of others.
And let’s not overlook the satisfaction of fixing things. Our hyperefficient economy makes it easy to throw products away the minute they break. And manufacturers are happy to indulge our laziness. But you don’t have to play that game; keeping a lawnmower or dryer running long past its expiration date can feel almost subversive. You’re beating the system.
In his recent book “Maintenance: Of Everything, Part One,” Stewart Brand describes routine maintenance as a kind of Zen-like attentiveness to the technology that sustains us. Keeping the machinery of life humming helps counter what he calls “the neglect mind,” the temptation to drift into complacency. Fixing stuff keeps you on your toes about life in general.
Of course, sometimes you do have to call an expert. I’m not going to replace my home’s roof, for example. But many household skills are easy to learn, Mr. Brand notes, especially in the age of YouTube. And nothing quite matches the quiet satisfaction you feel after installing a dishwasher or rewiring a vintage lamp.
It’s often said that men communicate best when side-by-side rather than talking face-to-face. DIY projects are a great opportunity for that kind of bonding. One friend of mine restores vintage cars with his teenage sons. I’ve never done anything quite that ambitious, but some of my best childhood memories involve helping my dad as we tackled various home projects. I vividly remember writing my name in the wet concrete after my father carefully anchored the posts of our backyard swing set.
One of my adult sons took time off work to help with my garden project. We measured everything, positioned the posts and then mixed and poured the concrete. And, yes, that hit me with a powerful sense of déjà vu. To make sure the posts were plumb, we used a 70-year-old level, one of many tools I inherited from my dad.
In the end, it’s just a fence, something I could have hired professionals to put up in a few hours. But I didn’t. I built it with my son—and we built it for the ages. That’s something you can’t buy.
The only thing left is to add some lasers.
Mr. Meigs is a Free Expression columnist at WSJ Opinion.
AS a long time gardiner my advice is to get the "laser-beam motion sensors"