ADD, MOVE, REMOVE, REFRAIN

In creating an object there are four moves:

Add, move, remove, refrain.

That’s it. Those are the moves.

Add, move, remove, refrain.

Add: we take one material and combine it with another. Salt sprinkled on pasta, two pieces of metal welded together, paint on a canvas, thread sewn into fabric, words written on a piece of paper with a pencil. One material is being added to another, forming something that wasn’t there before.

Move: we rearrange, shift the orientation or the order. A paragraph that you thought went at the end actually belongs at the beginning. A canvas gets flipped upside down, things get arranged from tallest to shortest and then shortest to tallest to see how each alignment feels. Moving materials around changes our perspective and therefore its meaning.

Remove: when we remove material we create a new shape. Sanding a piece of oak removes a small amount of wood. Paint thinner strips paint off of the surface. Stone chipped away with a chisel. Digging a hole in the ground. Words erased from a piece of paper with a rubber eraser. Removing material makes for a new space, a space that is sometimes physical, or mental, sometimes emotional, and sometimes all of these at once.

Refrain: We hold back. We stop. We leave it alone. That’s enough, we say. Adding, moving, or removing anything else would change how it is, and it doesn’t need to be changed. One essential move is to not move at all, and sometimes it’s the most difficult move. To let things be as they are, to not intervene, to not force ourselves on what we’re creating.

To refrain is to have a strong sense of restraint. The woman or the man who knows when to stop is a good reader of the work. They know that they are not the work, that they are separate from the work, and they can understand the work for what it is.

Add, move, remove, refrain. Again and again and again.

And so when complexities abound, when we are overwhelmed by the work – be it making a chair or tilling a field or the relational work with our families and friends, I think it’s helpful to slow down and ask ourselves, “What’s the next right move? Do I add, move, remove, or refrain?”

All we are doing there is naming the next door in front of us and walking through it.

To put it another way: Do the next right thing. And then the next, and then the next. One move at a time. And if we are able to do the next right thing consistently, one move after another, then after awhile what is produced is something far greater than a drawing with pencil or a table from wood.

What is produced is joy.

We get joy out of making something new. Others get joy from receiving a new thing, or from simply being around us when we are bathing in joy. There’s joy in working with beautiful materials. There’s joy in designing and executing. There joy in watching something grow and develop. And so on.

Tagging along with joy are beauty and truth and goodness. Those are some good companions.

Add, Move, Remove, Refrain.
Add, Move, Remove, Refrain.

You don’t need expensive tools. You don’t need a lot of space. You don’t need much at all, really - just enough to make the moves. I’ve witnessed joy in legos being put together, in a nail going through a board, in a fire that heats a cut of meat on a cast iron skillet, and in a cup of coffee being brewed.

The materials are available, the earth is abundant, and joy is free.

If at the end of the work, when the piece is done, if it’s good and true and beautiful and it brought joy, then it’s a massive success, for you and for everyone. You made four moves, over and over, and came away with both the creation of a new thing in the world and the experience of joy. How about that?