Friday, April 26, 2013

The Thing About Legos


I’ll be the first to admit that I am a mechanical and technological idiot.  Truly.  No exaggeration.  I barely know the difference between a screwdriver and a wrench and a hammer.  I have zero aptitude and zero interest and zero patience with those things. 

On the other hand, my older brother, Jim, is one of those individuals who can make something out of anything.  He knows what to do, how to do it, and somehow has this gift to see a result before he even begins.  Give him something we’d consider junk and he turns it into art.  Something of beauty, of purpose.  Gifted, by any measure.  He has designed houses, buildings, and created works of art.  He is an artist and architect by trade but wanted to teach.  His students loved him.  His ability to laugh at himself.  His sense of humor.  His wit.  His “Jim-ness”.

When we were little, he had an Erector Set.  Remember those?  Different metal pieces of different sizes and shapes with tiny nuts and bolts and wires.  If you had the deluxe set, you even had a tiny motor that could make the pieces move this way and that way.  In the right hands, in Jim’s hands, it was magical.  Me?  It was better that I watched from afar.  My very presence had the possibility of destroying it.

Erector Sets and Tinker Toys gave way to Legos.  Those little plastic pieces of different shapes and sizes that you’d snap together to make something.  They used to come in one big box of different colors.  Now, you can get a Lego Kit with directions on what to make and how to make it. 

Well, directions are another topic for discussion for some other Tuesday or Friday post. 

Jim didn’t need directions.  He’d scoff at directions.  He’d toss them aside as an annoyance.  Like I said, he could make something out of anything.  Me?  Well . . .

The Thing About Legos, Erector Sets and Tinker Toys is that each piece is significant because without it, you can’t put together what you set out to make.  You need each piece.  Each piece is important to the whole.

One piece by itself is nothing more than junk.  You can’t do much with it. (Except step on it with bare feet and scream bloody murder as you dance one footed around the living room, right?)

One piece is insignificant by itself.  But one piece is significant to the whole.  Without that one piece, the whole ceases to exist.  It doesn’t become. Without that one piece, something is always missing.  Without that one piece, the whole is incomplete.

In an early post, A Drop In The Ocean, I quoted Mother Teresa as saying that, “Without that one drop, the ocean would be less.”

The Thing About Legos . . . The Thing About Us, is that each of us is significant and important to the whole.  Unlike Legos, each of us is significant of and by ourselves. 

But Like Legos, how much more significant are we to the whole?  Very.  We bring a different color, a different perspective, a different view to the whole.  We contribute to make that whole.  We are significant.  Each of us.  Little or small.  Young or old.  Each of us.  Believe that.  Something to think about . . .

Live Your Life, and Make A Difference!

1 comment:

  1. An excellent post. Thoughtful and well worth the read. Makes you think about yourself and your place in the "whole." Jaye

    ReplyDelete

Thank you for your comment. I welcome your thought. Joe