Sweat equity: Finding joy in the physical world

Half his body had vanished into the open bonnet of a 25-year-old Toyota Qualis. It looked like he and the engine were mid-conversation. We tease him about this weekend ritual. But watching him last Sunday, it struck me that he was enjoying himself in a way that felt unfamiliar, and somewhat enviable. Like so many of us, this friend had moved into a world of code, cloud servers and invisible software architecture as a young man. All week, he still lives within abstractions. And so, on Sundays, he chooses metal. It isn’t a vain or fruitless pursuit (although those can be precious too). Take a drive in this car, and it doesn’t rattle. It handles smoothly. It passes inspection because he makes sure it is well-maintained. It did not come with a dashboard camera, so my friend sourced one and installed it. When parts disappear from catalogues, he scouts for them in second-hand markets. When the fitness certificate is due for renewal, he lines up to find out where vehicle stands, adjusts what must be adjusted, and ensures it is registered as road-worthy again. It’s hard work, but he loves it. I initially assumed this was nostalgia. I refused to part with my first car far longer than was reasonable, so I knew the feeling. It turned out that wasn’t it, for my friend. He told me he likes to work with his hands. He likes the resistance and friction; the clean logic of cause and effect. The feedback is immediate, indifferent, honest. There is no interface softening the message. No algorithm compensating for a mistake. Somewhere in that blunt honesty, he says, he finds joy. Most of us don’t work like that anymore. We move slides in presentations, or push code that executes in servers we will never see. We send email, and something happens somewhere. We click, swipe, forward, type. Our labour is real, but it is abstracted, layered, mediated. The modern professional is fluent in intangibles. But the human hand was not designed for abstraction alone. It was designed to grip, lift, feel grain against skin and resistance under palm. To measure weight. To sense temperature. To correct course not through data but through touch. Working with the hands, thought collapses into action. The distance between intention and outcome narrows. It’s not just the car. My friend also built the furniture in his home, from raw planks. It doesn’t have the polished finish of something one would buy at a store. There are rough edges and small asymmetries, which are details he treasures. Functionally, each piece does exactly what he wanted it to do; fits precisely into the living space he had in mind for himself. It means something to him that he was able to do this; it is also meaningful that there isn’t another piece like each of these in the world. Hearing him talk, it occurred to me how dramatically we have traded singularity for convenience. If something breaks, we replace it with another just like it, barely even registering as we click to order. If a device slows, we upgrade. Where we once rolled up our sleeves and got to work on possessions that meant something to us — radios, watches, even early cellphones — the skill of diagnosis is fading. Clicking all day has made us impatient. What do we do with all the time we “save”? We waste it on mindlessly scrolling anyway. We tell ourselves this is what convenience looks like; and leisure. But when a culture shifts to disposal from repair, it doesn’t stop at things. It extends to relationships, to people. The job market, to cite one example, becomes ruthless with experience. Seniors are replaced in “restructuring” efforts that simply aim to swap a vocal old guard with a shiny new batch of recruits. In such a world, my friend points out, it can be a comfort to know one can build, repair, keep a machine alive; make from raw materials what one needs. This is the kind of competence that alters posture. In an economy that can make one feel replaceable, there is ballast in knowing one possesses skills that are becoming increasingly rare in the world. For the rest of us, we focus on “busyness” and are poorer for it. Because there is joy in the physical world that no screen can simulate. Hands were created to mould and to be used, not to be rested on glass. I realise now that when my friend shuts the bonnet and the Qualis engine turns over without hesitation, he doesn’t look nostalgic. He looks grounded. I suspect most of us have forgotten what that feels like. What grounds you? How often do you make time for it? Is there something like a 25-year-old Qualis in your life?