“Dad, did the best he could with the tools he had.” –Toby McCarter.
(“Purple Rain, Whiskey, and Legacy.” DADtalks Season #1, Episode #7.)
Men love tools. I love tools and I wish I had a weekly budget that I could just spend on tools. The good and bad about power tools is that they are always improving so the tool you bought a few years ago is already outdated so of course you want the new one. Seriously, it gets annoying how they will change the battery shape or design so then they don’t fit in your old tool and then it’s impossible to get your old battery so you end up just having to buy a new tool when your old batteries give out.
Similar to us as men, we need to continually upgrade the tools we have in order to be effective. As a child, I remember my step-dad teaching us how to use hand-tools which included a hammer, hand saw, and screw drivers. All of these tools still work and you can do just about anything you need with these tools but there are new tools that make some of those jobs a lot easier.
Have you ever not had the right tool for a job? I have. And it usually happens right in the middle of a project so you are faced with the decision of getting the new tool or having to make do with what you have. Or you struggle and struggle with a project only to find out later that there is a tool that would have made your life so much easier.
This is a struggle that I have had in my personal life. It’s that feeling of helplessness when you are faced with a situation and the tools that you have are just not working and you just don’t know what else to do. You feel like you are out of options. But you are only out of options if you give up. So what do you do? The same thing when you face this situation with a building project.
You can keep going at the problem with the tools at your disposal, making things worse and leaving you feeling frustrated and exhausted.
Or you can go get help. You can ask a friend who you know has faced a similar project to see what tools they used. Or go to the man’s mall and find that brand new shiny tool you need to succeed. The key with these options is that you are going outside of yourself to find a solution.
Yes, you may have been handed down only a few tools but you are not confined to just those tools. A characteristic of a great man is that they are willing to ask for help. No man has all the tools. Even if a man did have all the tools, it does not mean he knows how and when to use all those tools which brings us back to our options: keep going at it alone or ask for help.