Day #699: Repair, Replace
Fixing and Breaking
My mother has given me a broken table. It’s not as bad as it sounds… it was one we grew up with, inherited from my grandmother. Something always present and dependable, as tables are, until it wasn’t… New Years Eve and one of the three legs spit, depositing everything onto the floor.
On closer inspection, it had form for this crime: whilst none of us had noticed before, the leg was splinted from a previous break, and the old glue had finally given way. Or maybe the pear wood, which must be a hundred years old, simply decided that enough was enough.
Anyway: I’m going to patch it up. Either bracing and gluing the old leg, or maybe updating it with some new ones. I’m undecided, but I think it has life in it yet.
Some things we throw away, some we repair, and others we adapt.
Use your sixty seconds today to think of something you have repaired - or that needs to be repaired.
A story, an idea, a process, a relationship, a machine, a purpose?
When do we invest the time to make things better, or do we simply write them off and leave them behind?
Dear Julian,
I have subscribed to your newsletter from Germany this January! And I am already commenting. I find your letters very inspiring.
I once read an article about giving up in the German magazine GEO: https://shop.geo.de/de_DE/einzelhefte/einzelausgaben/geo-07-2023/2119407.html
It was an eyeopener for me because as a child learned to durchhalten, aussitzen, to stay the course. After reading that article I felt that quitting a book I don't like and that doesn't serve me, for example, doesn't mean I am a complete failure.
It is great to mend things and relationships in order to keep them. However, it is also good to replace things that can't be fixed. And it is even better to know when it is better to repair or to replace. Because that article is in German and it isn't online, I have found another nice one about giving up: https://ladymiranda.medium.com/the-art-of-giving-up-5d7d553d6a99
Sorry in case you have already written about giving up in previous newsletters!