Repair As A State Of Mind
It’s commonplace when something breaks to throw it out and buy a new replacement. But there’s a lot of value in learning to repair and maintain the things around us.
The van pulls up under a grove of trees outside the local library. Two older men get out. They put up a small marquee and a plastic table by the side of the van. Then they open the shelves installed in the van to reveal a dazzling array of tools and spare parts. Finally, they fold out a sign to say the Toy Hospital is open for patients.
All across Japan, toy hospitals exist to repair broken and beloved toys. Some are mobile stations like this one I used to see near my home in Tokyo. Others have permanent locations. There is a Japan Toy Hospital Association that lists more than 650 toy hospitals and “has about 1,700 ‘doctors’ working on repairs”.
The toy hospitals also serve social functions. They help older men make friendships and retain a feeling of being useful to society. In most countries, men over the age of 55 don’t ever make new friends again. Loneliness for older men is a huge problem that manifests in a range of health issues.
Repair Is a Way to Resist Consumerism
This isn’t a “Japan-only” story. Repair cafes are popping up around the world. These are places where people gather to fix things and get advice on how to do repairs. The venues usually have tools available for people to use and experienced repairers on hand who can offer advice and suggestions.
A recent New York Times Wirecutter article highlights that these repair cafes tend to have a fun, encouraging, and educational sense of community.
Repair cafes also serve an important economic and social role because they reduce waste along with the emissions involved in making and shipping new products.
An Expression of Ownership
“If you can’t fix it, you don’t own it” is the bold claim that opens iFixit’s Repair Manifesto. iFixit is a company that makes and sells tools for repairing tech devices like computers, smartphones and gaming devices. They also have a big library of free repair guides.
Many of the products in our homes can’t be easily repaired. Some are made so they can’t be opened using conventional tools. Few, if any, places offer professional repair. And access to manuals and schematics is limited or simply not available.
This pushes us to buy new products when older ones could be made to last longer. It also discourages us from learning to repair our own belongings. It’s bad for the environment. And it robs us of the satisfaction that comes from being able to fix things or keep enjoying possessions that have a cherished and welcome place in our lives.
Oriented Towards Reality
Maintenance is the natural order of the world. Things can only be new for a very short time. For most of its life, the stuff around us is aging, decaying, and in need of maintenance.
This is good. Welcome. Something we should embrace.
Maintenance is the other side of taking care of the things in our lives. When they break, we can take of care of them through repair. Or we can try to avoid having them break through maintenance. Both go hand in hand and share the same tools and philosophy.
Maintenance – taking care of something – is the ultimate act of gratitude. It is being thankful by making sure something is ready to perform. Fit for service. In excellent condition. Maintenance is love expressed in craft and process.
Maintenance is also grounded in reality. In observing and understanding how a thing works, how it wears, and how it can get damaged. You have to understand how a thing works to maintain it. You also have to care. To be the kind of person who notices and acts when needed.
Repair Is a Form of Moral Action
Being the kind of person who repairs things involves taking a moral stance. It’s an economic and environmental stance. It’s saying that it’s better to invest in maintaining what we have instead of always dumping old things and digging up resources to make new ones. It’s being oriented towards learning and observation. It’s understanding how things work and learning how to fix and maintain them. And it asks us to be oriented towards action. Not to wait till things fail and then doing nothing about it beyond getting the credit card to make a replacement purchase. We become proactive about making things work.
Repair and maintenance are ways to bring calm and order to a world prone to chaos and entropy. By choosing to value some things, to not allow them to wallow in disrepair, we demonstrate our values. This matters to me, so I take care of it, because in turn it will take care of me, allowing me to express who I am.
Perhaps most important of all, the repair and maintenance mindset teaches us that things can be fixed. Breakage and failure need not be final. It’s easy to give up on things. Or get caught in lament over the faults they acquire. But very often, trying to repair pays off. Broken things can be fixed.
