A Parable about Finesse

Once upon a time there was a woodworker.  He made nice things.

One day, the woodworker was turning chair legs on his lathe.  The fading light of day cast a shadow across his efforts.  The woodworker smiled as he contemplated strong hands effortlessly wielding a skew chisel while taking perfect, thin shavings from the spinning hard rock maple.  He was proud of his shavings and of all of the years of practice it had taken to reach mastery of a difficult tool.

Suddenly, however, the woodworker observed a view that he had never seen before.  He saw white clenched hands and fingers with bulging veins, hanging on for dear life to a tool that had yet to be tamed.

The woodworker smiled, vowed to relax his grip, and enjoyed the fleeting rays of the sun.




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