IT
Thursday, 22 November 2007
Many of the jobs that I get as a painter/handyman are for people that I already knew before I had this career move. Or for friends of these people. And more than once I end up designing a logo for somebody whose home I am painting.
Or a Typeface. Or both, like for Elise and Etienne, in whose house I have been doing all kind of things in the past few weeks.
I go there every Wednesday morning and then I get a list with things to be done: fixing a squeaking door, making light in the toilet, a shelf in the kitchen, repairing some holes in the floor, hanging up frames, painting a hall, etcetera.
I love this kind of work. It is difficult to one little job in a house where you live and where there are 1001 other things to do, but I don’t have anything else on my mind: I just come there to do whatever is asked. And I always try to find the most economic solutions: maximum effect with minimum effort and costs. It is amazing what can be done with little effort and little costs in little time. And especially by a person who never had much interest in this kind of work. Before I started doing this work, about twelve years ago, I never did anything, I had barely ever touched any instrument or even a paintbrush.
There are many aspects of this work that I like, but one surely is the experience of Life as a living intelligence that takes over my mind and body. Hm, this sounds rather vague, but it is exactly what I mean. I start a job without an idea how to do it: the ideas come along the way. I just follow the insights that come to me, or the things that people tell me. The less I try to think, the easier things go. And often it is miraculous what happens when I am in such a flow. I enjoy watching myself doing things I didn’t knew I could, or coming up with solutions that amaze myself most of all. It are definitely not the parts of Frits Jonker that I can reach by thinking that do all this! It seems to me that Frits Jonker is connected with something much much larger. I think that all of Life is behind my insights and actions. I seem to have some freedom to think and do a whatever I want, but my experience is that the result is far more interesting if I step aside and let Life take over. Or whatever this Bigger Thing is. I often call it the Source, because it is indeed the source of ideas, insights, imagination and other interesting mental income. I have no idea how this Information Technology works, but I have no doubt that IT is real! Often it is called Love, but since that word suffers heavy from inflation, I don’t like to use that.
Many other people have written about these ideas and experiences, but often in ways that make IT seem mysterious or exceptional. I think IT is not like that: it such a familiar and common experience that we tend to overlook it or not recognise the miracle of it. By writing about IT like I do now, I also make it seem more mysterious than IT in fact is.
Here is a song that says IT much better that I can.