War With Nature in anticlimatic

The state is about to milk my small business of 10 grand to help replenish its covid depleted coffers, which is mildly annoying, but at least we were fortunate enough to remain open (and, indeed, booming) throughout- unlike some. However, that 10 grand was hard earned, and thinking about where it will be spent anywhere outside the fantasy of a family or person otherwise on the verge of destitution is irksome.

I’m not sure most people realize how difficult it is to maintain the basic things they take for granted. To get water from the ground and into your shower involves hundreds of men and women- mining copper, smelting steel, crawling underneath houses in the dirt and the dark, designers, engineers- a veritable army and coalition of many different minds. As an educated man of taste, versed in mechanical engineering and the arts, I can appreciate raw brain power and elegant design. Theoretical constructs and other high thoughts are the fountainhead of achievement. I appreciate the white collar, the finer aesthetics, and the open sensitive disposition. From that perspective, nature is a loving and beautiful mother. All comfortable lifestyles and environments, enriched with art, magnify this side of it.

Yet there is another.

Even as removed from nature as we are, elevated by the mecha of our grandparents, we are yet under siege by it- always. It is hidden. Or slow, or patient. The means with which your water falls from your showerhead is disintegrating in real time. Metal rots the same as wood, and I’d wager a good 50% of the materials that are used to carry it to you, at any point, are gone from the time it was newly installed. Eventually, somewhere, it will split and begin hemorrhaging. As we age we’re no different. Time and entropy break everything, and we are left to fight off the inevitable as long as possible. And that fight is ongoing, whether you participate in it directly or outsource it to others.

There are things in life that need doing, for both self and society. Hard things. Things that nature and physics and physical limitations do not want you to do, but things that must be done anyhow. Sometimes a person has to dig through snow in the middle of the night, crawl into a dark freezing hole, and work by flashlight with frozen fingers at removing the failed furnace pilot light to clean it out with a wire brush in the hopes of getting the furnace to fire again, and saving every pipe in your home- months of labor- from exploding.

Accomplishing things like this removes all pretenses that nature is a loving and beautiful mother by necessity. It’s the other face that must be reckoned with- a hard, unforgiving, and merciless foe that must be attacked with one’s absolute entirety. If one finds the hatch frozen shut and unmoving, one might pound it with their hands to budge it. If pounding doesn’t work, perhaps kicking it will. If something doesn’t work, something else must be tried. Will power must see it through. Quitting is not an option.

The people that take on these types of tasks have as unique and necessary an understanding of life and human nature as their benevolent earth counterparts. Both are worthy of respect. Doctors have better taste in music, but plumbers save more lives every year.

Last updated February 13, 2021