Chainsaws and the Meaning of Life
The monastery has 7 chainsaws. Three work well.
Before I came here, my relationship with machinery went about as far as turning on the toastie maker. I remember my grandfather’s shock when he found out that I didn’t know how to check my car’s oil, and his horror when I added that I had never even opened the bonnet. So at first chainsaws seemed like some strange, alien technology. Alluring, because they are loud and dangerous, but entirely foreign.
Since we need a lot of wood for cooking, bathing, and heating, I now use chainsaws regularly. Fuel needs to be mixed, sawdust grit removed, chains sharpened. I’ve come to love it. The oil, the noise, the raw power of the machine and learning to understand them.
Sometimes, though, I wonder if it’s a complete waste of time.
There was a moment recently when I looked around and asked myself what the hell I was doing trying to repair chainsaws in a dingily lit farm barn in Japan.
Aren’t there better things to do? Build a business, raise a family, roam the world freely…
Surely there’s something more meaningful, something worthwhile.
Nope. Chainsaw maintenance is life’s peak.
It’s as deep as it goes, as good as it gets. Each moment is as meaningful as you make it.
I mean the highs are great too - dancing wildly, falling in love, good sex, real hugs - but the giddiness of the highs can mask the magic inherent in every moment which is the miracle that there is anything happening at all.
In this sense the blander the experience the better. If you can find meaning in any activity, whether repairing chainsaws or cutting carrots, then it’s clear that a meaningful life does not depend on having a certain kind of experience.
Only the catch is that if you search for this meaning - this deep knowing that things are perfectly OK just as they are - then you’re sure to miss it. Searching reinforces the sense that what you’re looking for isn’t already here.
Which is why it’s only when I stop pondering meaning and get back to the chainsaw before me that life roars it’s full-throttled response.