HAMMERS, CROWBARS, AND TESTOSTERONE...

What do you get when you cross a freshly purchased house, with a group of well-seasoned builders, and a vision for the future? ... Anyone? ... Bueller? ... Community. Yup. You get community. I know, you were hoping for something witty, a punch-line of sorts. Instead I give you a cryptic one word answer. Deal with it. :-)

You get community, in all of the true sense of the word: "A unified body of individuals." On the surface, this particular definition may seem rather bland. Invocations of a greater meaning left solely to the imagination. But therein lies the rub, as many examples of the power which a large and well organized community wields can, and have, been seen over and over again throughout history. The current civil uprising occurring at this very moment across the Middle East, a perfect example of the power which a unified body of individuals can possess when focused on a specific task or goal.

Certainly this picture of a boy, overlooking the sea of Egyptians unified in peaceful protest, produces a vastly greater sense of the definition for community. Such is the nature of these things I suppose, but there you have it. A powerful force of people united with purpose. Of course there can then be good community, and bad community, but that's a topic for another post altogether.

This past Saturday bore witness to a special kind of community that I had the pleasure of sharing. A friend of mine, the same friend who I mentioned in the previous post, had a little 'sweet' thrown into his week of 'bitter' with the closing of a new house for his family. He and his wife searched long and hard for a place that they could call home, having a check list and a vision - a criteria by which their new home needed to satisfy. As most houses do not come spec'ed to the precise vision of our mind's eye, they viewed this house with an imagination of what it could be - which let's be honest, is more than half of the fun and adrenaline to be had while looking for a house with which to make a home. More than that, it provides the blueprint, the road map, the compass point directing where to go once acquiring said house. With all that in hand, the only thing that remains is to "do".

As anyone who has been involved in home renos, you all know that a massive amount of money is to be saved in doing the demolition portion yourself. With this in mind, my friend threw out the call to his friends to pick up a hammer, and join him in smashing the living hell out of his newly purchased property. Now I'm not sure what gene dictates the pleasure to be found in men with breaking things, but on some basic level we quite simply love it. Therapeutic? Yes. Dirty? Oh yeah. Accomplishment? You bet. I said yes without any hesitation. I confess that I wasn't sure what the turnout would be like though, and had expected maybe four or five guys having at it. Wow. Was I wrong. One by one, men with tools and purpose entered stage left, and within an hour of arriving, upwards of fifteen guys were swinging hammers... gripping crowbars... sweating testosterone. It was, simply put, glorious. Every now and then, just looking through the house, it was really cool to just see the amazing amount of work being joyfully carried out. Walls coming down. Floors and foundations being torn to their core. A big... fat... dusty mess. A mess created by a group of individuals unified as one body. Glorious. Friendships were made, laughs and new memories shared, the cuts and bruises of a job well done to be seen on the hands of all who worked together that day. Community. It was a pretty cool thing to see. The reality that none of it would have happened if none had raised their hammer was not lost on me.

Final Confession: I'm learning the obvious truth in life that if you want to build something at all resembling a vision for the future, you have to lift your hammer. The experience from Saturday further punctuated that such building is far more fun, and made far easier, when accomplished with others by your side - their hammers raised also for the same vision.