I had a lot of things on my mind in the past hour so it took me a while to school my thoughts into a semblance of calm to write this. And it’s nice to have thought-provoking topics like this on #kiss that makes us reflect on our lives.
I asked my Mom when I was young why I never saw any repairers at home. No technicians or mechanics to fix one thing or the other. She laughed and said that if they even came to the house, my Dad would end up teaching them the job so there wasn’t a need. I didn’t understand but later I saw it.
There wasn’t a need for them because Dad did everything. He fixed the cars himself, and the generator. He fixed the leaking pipes and made little stools from wood to use around the house. He mended our shoes and fixed the phone chargers when they got bad. I was always in awe. And asked him how and why he was so good at everything and he’d say it was to save millions.
But it didn’t end there, Dad would tell us plainly that he’s lucky to have five girls but that means we would all do what was considered “male jobs.” He wasn’t calling men outside to help him lift the heavy solar batteries because his girls were just as capable. And he didn’t want us to go around looking for guys that would check what was wrong if the car stopped us by the way and he wasn’t around, we should try solving it first.
So, pretty early, we learnt things from fixing the gen plugs and fixing the car batteries and ‘priming’ it so it would run smoothly. We learnt to do everything that was supposed to be beyond us and till now, it’s helped me a lot.
One of my fond memories was once when we were out with my Mom to get groceries for the house. And the car stopped us on the road there. Mom promptly opened the bonnet of the car and told my sister and I to go see what was wrong, while she stayed in the car.
And so my sister was checking the batteries and told me to get the spanner from the toolbox in the boot of the car. And then a man walked up to us in alarm and asked, “Do you know what you’re doing at all?” My sister and I smiled a little because we knew it was another opportunity to show oblivious, assuming, opinionated men what they didn’t know.
And so, we just silently worked. Another man stopped, too and told us that we shouldn’t spoil the car. We were still silent trying to fix the problem. We called out to our Mom to try starting the car and it grunted a bit but didn’t start. The men laughed and one even wanted to shift us but the warning glare I shot him with my spanner up in the air was enough to keep him still.
We found out that one of the battery heads wasn’t fixed properly and so we removed the wires and fixed it back again and called out to my Mom to start and the car roared to life. We promptly closed the bonnet not failing to give the men a very condescending, superior look as they gaped at us. We got in to meet a laughing Mom who said we were way too dramatic, but said that it was sure to teach them a lesson.
My whole point to this is to drive the message of “less is more.” That statement in my opinion simply means using the resources available to us to avoid ceaseless expenditures. Less is more means that we have used the skills we have acquired to solve problems that could have made us susceptible to exploitation from professionals that deem us ignorant.
It means that we have a certain level of independence knowing that we can do things for ourselves and that if there’s an emergency, we wouldn’t be at a loss. To be honest, there are times when our needs are beyond us. Times when our skills aren’t enough and we have to take the issue to professionals. Being a specialist at one thing is good but it’s better to know a little about a lot of things. We don’t have to be an A. C is just fine.
So that the generator repairer doesn’t say that the engine has knocked when it’s clearly just the fuel pump. Hence, a minimalist lifestyle is achieved. Saves cost. Less becomes more.