Admittedly, I like techy stuff. My iPhone puts a world of information in my pocket, plus it takes decent photos and videos. I can talk to my MacBook. I have a wireless Sonos sound system. I have two cloud backup accounts.
And none of this is as cool as doing things with my own hands. Getting dirty, oily, cut, shocked, bruised, stung…digging into the earth, hanging a ceiling fan, cutting wood, changing oil, pruning flowers. These are tactile, human experiences, and they’re fun.
In Japan, there are master artisans who create works of art in the form of forged knives, mashiko ceramic, kanazawa gold leaf, ornate paper, animal-hair writing brushes and more. This practice is called tewaza, meaning hand technique or handcraft. If the grid went down tomorrow, I wouldn’t know what’s on next week’s calendar. But the men and women who practice tewaza wouldn’t miss a beat.
Want to lower your blood pressure? Escape from the noise of the day? Be transfixed by visual and aural artistry? Stop what you’re doing and check out the Tewaza YouTube page now. You’ll find 20 short videos, each about five minutes in length, that will restore your faith in human skill and artistry. And it will unquestionably send your body and mind into a state of tranquility.
