I don’t come from a family where people worked with their hands, so I don’t know why I like to heat up metal and hammer it in the form I want it to be. There are many jobs where you make something direct or indirect but shaping hard steel must be one of the most direct ways of fulfilling this urge a lot of us feel, making something out of nothing. It also helps that I can play with fire, make lots of noise, smash a hammer down on glowing steel, and smell the poisonous fumes of melting steel and zinc. 

Yesterday I wrote about a book that defends the idea that we have no free will and that our lives are more or less determined from the beginning with very little wiggle room. For today’s post, I was looking for a quote about forging (steel), and I ended up with countless quotes where people tell you that you have to shape your own future. I bet that all these people forge their own path and write about it, do this because they have the character to do so. You can not learn to be adventurous or spontaneous if the circumstances of your life dictate otherwise. Maybe that’s why it is so fulfilling to make something with your hands because almost everybody can make something and shape it in the form they want; we feel deep down that (our) life is unbendable.