Dirty hands = clean(er) mind

Image courtesy of Jesse Orrico

Have you ever wanted to take your brain out, hold it in your hands and figure out whats really going on in there?

I’m guessing the answer is yes, if you are alive and breathing. Its a fascinating thing and one can only wonder - literally - at what makes it tick. Alan Watts comes close when he called our minds “Prickly Goo” but being human, we need more.

From time to time, we need to see under the hood.  When times are tough, and we are spinning up a storm of doubt,overwhelm, regret or anxiousness (or all 4 combined - DORA!) in our minds, it can help to create a little distance, to see the wood for the trees and be able to take stock of what is actually happening. It can help to be able to look at your brain and see it.

I had a case of DORA a few years back. I had stumbled, and fallen and was in that featureless, grey place that demands you stay there and never feel better. My road out, my peaceful path, was an unconventional one. I volunteered in a bicycle repair shop. I went from fear and self-doubt to finding a road back to myself, a better self. And largely I credit that to replacing chain sets, fixing punctures and replacing broken axles.

From day 1, despite my initial nervousness and lack of bike-repair skills, it felt great. In fact, every time I did it, it felt great. It had a lingering effect too, and I used to wonder, what was it about fixing bicycles that made me feel good during and straight afterwards, and that also gave me a sense of contentedness up to a few days later. I used to wonder about what working on a bike repair shop was doing for me, and to me. I hadn’t enjoyed anything as much in so long.

My first thought was that it was simply learning. I had always loved to learn so that idea was an easy target. I was simply learning again, at a ferocious pace (being a beginner) and it felt great. But there was something more.

Bicycle repair, getting my hands greasy, had as much an effect on my inner world as it has on my outer world.

I’ve thought about it a lot. The connection between working with my hands and the effect it had on my mental state back then is a difficult one to describe. It felt like a few things were happening. Working with my hands, doing real manual labour, actually gave my mind a rest, maybe because I was using a different part of my brain. By giving my mind a rest, I stopped being rocked by every thought and event around me, which was a regular occurrence, spinning me off into further confusion. Instead, I was able to set myself still and strong on some level inside, even for a while. In doing that, I was able to see again. I gained some perspective. I was able to better steer myself. I got predictable results from the way I used my mind, literally in the mechanical sense.

It was like when you go on a long holiday, and are able to see what your life back home is really like or the way that having a good laugh really cheers you up and actually feels like a little break in the day. I found that is was simply distance, a mental gap, that was the real key to thinking straight, to moving forward. I could break my habit of over-thinking and replace it with action and focus through building and fixing. It tied me to the present and made me more aware of getting distracted by my mind time-travelling to the past and future. I was using my hands to get a grip on my brain.

Working with bicycles took me out of my own head. I had to pick up a wrench and start fixing something that was at hand, right there in front of me. The job had a beginning, a middle and an end. It didn’t demand that I go inside myself and look for some deeper meaning, I just had to replace a headset, fix a puncture, attach a new chain - and that was all. On top of that my actions were helpful to someone else. A repaired bike is a useful thing! My finished work was there for all to behold, so my real-world competence was actually real for others as well; it had a social currency and gave me a place in the world. Double whammy.

I was able to transform my nebulous cloud problems into a clock problem, something I could work with. Dr. Karl Popper would be proud. When I built outside myself I was actually constructing a better “inner” me. I was starting on the outside and working in, my default fixing mode in the shop. Whether that was from a place of weakness or strength, taking the problem out and giving it some air, even if that air smelled of bicycle oil and rubber, helped to shape what was happening inside.

With bike repair, I was building. I was working it out with my hands. Working with my hands was putting me back in touch with the inner working of things, including myself. It was providing meaning and that was motivating. Even when I was tearing a bike down to release a decent frame, I was building. Building something with my hands was helping me to reframe my thoughts and to move forward in my life. It was working in the bike shop that uncovered a lot of the thoughts that I unconsciously lived by, good and bad. Working with my hands was helping me begin to uncover the roots of my problems and also to allow me to see what rules I was living my life by, the things I believed in that were the basis of my mindset and perspective. It was important that I built in the world, almost to do it in front of other people and to feel like I was contributing to something bigger than myself. I was testing myself, feeling a little performance anxiety. It was good to have a little challenge in my life, a little intensity so I could grow.

Through working with my hands, I had found a way to bring something new and good into my life again. It is the man who builds a better mousetrap that will have a path beaten to his door, not the man who designs the better mousetrap.

Learn to clean out your head from time to time, by getting your hands dirty. Have that conversation out loud, the one that you have been having with yourself and consistently gets you nowhere. You don’t need to fix bikes, or dig ditches. You just have to move, and move the needle, feel that you have an effect, that you are an agent of change, for yourself and others.

This idea, of working with your hands, isn’t a new one. Its not groundbreaking, front-page news. Its simple, and its proven. It's the next small thing.

“I don’t like work - no man does - but I like what is in the work - the chance to find yourself. Your own reality - for yourself, not for others - what no other man can ever know. They can only see the mere show, and never can tell what it really means.” - Marlow in Heart of Darkness