Re:Ask HN: Why does a busy man build a shed?
by sabhiram on Sunday January 02, 2022 @02:02PM
(#29772289)
Super interesting. Been reading some Alan Watts lately, and he points out that while you go to "work", you "play" the piano, you don't "work" the piano. You don't "work" basketball, while still expending effort and incurring risk!
Re:Ask HN: Why does a busy man build a shed?
by serenloss on Sunday January 02, 2022 @05:29PM
(#29774761)
Life is like a musical piece. If it were all about getting to the destination, then the best composers would be those with the fastest songs. Play is about the journey, rather than the result.
In this sense, shed-building is somewhere between work and play. The act is enjoyed roughly as much as the product.
Your question only looks like a puzzle or paradox because the word "work" is overloaded with many meanings and it includes simultaneous connotations of negative "unpleasant chores" and positive "fulfilling efforts". (related concept: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equivocation)
If those multiple meanings are not understood, one can twist themselves into rhetorical puzzles such as:
- If marriage is work, why do people get married? I thought people hated work?!?
- If raising kids is work, why do people have kids?
It's because the type of "work" above are activities where many people desire to expend the effort. There's a higher goal than any so-called "work" above.
Same idea as a home sewer that "works" for weeks on their own dresses and jackets while the factory sewer only thinks of needlework as "working at a job". If one asks the home sewer if making that jacket "took a lot of work", the hobbyist will answer "yes" without any irony at all.
So asking, "why did the home sewer create extra work for themselves to create dresses?" ... would be another variation of your question about you building sheds.