Saturday, September 15, 2007

Thought for the day

If I'm really bored, is this a result of the situation or my lack of creativity in entertaining my mind?
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1 comment:

gas28man said...

Interesting you should bring this up. I spent a long wait at the wonderful Traverse City airport recently, and above the fireplace (yes, fireplace) in the Arts & Crafts-style waiting area was this inscription: "Boredom is a matter of choice. Not circumstance."

So I looked up the origins of the quotation, and I was pleased to find that it traces its roots to one of my favorite pieces of furniture, the Morris chair, and its greatest purveyor, Gustav Stickley, though it didn't come directly from Stickley himself. Here's a nice little writeup on the topic from a magazine in the Masonic order:

"As Freemasons we use the language of the Craftsman, and we talk of “laboring in the quarries,” a sound euphemism for the work we do on behalf of ourselves and family, Freemasonry and society at large. Whenever I hear that phrase, the image forms in my mind of a medieval stonemason, first contemplating and then carefully chiseling away at a rough ashlar. A similar image I see is that of an Arts & Crafts furniture maker lovingly shaping a piece of quarter-sawn oak into the arm of a Morris chair.

"Gustav Stickley, one of the leaders of the Arts & Crafts movement in early 20th century America, learned his ideals from William Morris, his predecessor in late Victorian England, who in turn formulated his philosophy of noble craftsmanship from John Ruskin, an earlier British historian and critic of architecture. All three men believed that working with your hands, if you also used your head AND your heart, was noble. All three men also believed in mottoes. Stickley and Morris were both fond of one in particular: “The lyfe so short / the Craft so long to lerne.” This comes from the works of Geoffrey Chaucer, and I think is about as good a motto for Freemasonry as I have ever heard.

"I try to hold that concept of working with my hands as being noble whenever I’m doing carpentry work or toiling in the garden. In our modern society, not all of us are fortunate enough to get to do physical labor like that. Our labors in the quarries of daily life are often filled with frustration and boredom. Elbert Hubbard, a contemporary and rival of Stickley, coined the motto, “Boredom is a matter of choice, not circumstance.” I contend here that most of us are not bored, but often we feel that the work we do is not noble."

Don't know if that clarifies things for you any, but it's a cool story.

3:59 PM

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