Hammer and a Nail

Have you noticed how some song lyrics “strike a chord” with you (pun intended), at just the right moment in your life? About a month ago, “Hammer and a Nail” by the Indigo Girls came on the radio as I was driving home:

I had a lot of good intentions
Sit around for fifty years and then collect a pension
Started seein’ the road to hell and just where it starts

I gotta get out of bed get a hammer and a nail
Learn how to use my hands, not just my head
I think myself into jail…

The song struck home on a number of levels. Having recently retired, the lyrics were particularly relevant. After decades as a teacher trying to effect positive change, I found myself asking, “What good had I accomplished?” 

I don’t have a definitive answer, but I do know that overthinking things keeps you locked away from the present–a lesson learned years ago having read Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now.

I had forgotten the cost of thinking too much, especially about the past. As “Hammer and a Nail” points out, being well intentioned is not enough. 

We often believe we can “think” ourselves free. We reason that if we pull a mental thread thin enough, we can untangle our problems. Unfortunately, most of our worrying only serves to keep us captive inside our own heads. 

Mentally hammering away at the same problem serves no constructive purpose. And as your ego starts to loosen its grip you begin to ask yourself, “Is that all there is to life?”

Admittedly, our life story is mostly a fictional tale made necessary by the ego’s need for coherence and stability. But what lies below our ego? To quote the song again, 

I see my face on the surface, I look a lot like narcissus
A dark abyss of an emptiness
Standin’ on the edge of a drowning blue

Once the facade of your ego has cracked, so what? What is left? Where is the light? 

We are told that creating new meaning from life (picking up a metaphoric hammer and a nail), is as easy as living in the present moment. Unfortunately, “living in the present” has become a pervasive cultural truism practiced more in the breach than in the observance. 

The path to enlightenment, it seems, is a rocky one and I continue to struggle not to “think myself into jail.” But one of the best ways to avoid this, I’ve found, is to focus on creative work with creative people who are willing to put aside their egos and “think the best of each other” as we strive to create.