Chris Hadfield, looking down at the curve of the Earth from the silent isolation of orbit, once observed: “It’s your life to tinker with, learn from, live and love.”
It is a marvelous word—tinker.
The more I dwell on it, the more I suspect that “tinkering” is the most honest description of what we actually do with our lives. This realization feels especially poignant as one enters their “mature years.” In our youth, we speak grandly of “Free Will” as if it were a massive rudder capable of turning a Great Lakes freighter on a dime. But as the years pass, we realize that Free Will is rarely about radical reinvention. More often, it is expressed in the small, persistent adjustments of the tinker.
We do not choose our origins. Our parents, our early circumstances, and the foundational years of our schooling are largely decided for us. By the time we gain full agency, the concrete has often begun to set: our career paths are etched, our physical appearance is established, and our core temperaments are formed. Our faith, our deepest habits, and our essential personalities are not usually susceptible to sudden, seismic shifts.
Instead, they are subject to “tinkers.”
There is a humility in this word. It is why I love it so much. When a legendary golfer or a star quarterback is asked how they stay at the top, they don’t talk about rebuilding from scratch. They say, “I’m still tinkering with my swing,” or “I’m tinkering with my footwork.” Artists do the same—a slight adjustment of the light, a subtle change in the brushstroke, a minute shift in the phrasing of a sentence.
To tinker is not to minimize the effort; rather, it is to acknowledge that greatness resides in the margins. It is the recognition that excellence is a process of constant, incremental refinement.
This brings us to the Lenten season—a dedicated time for the spiritual tinker. Lent is not necessarily about a total collapse and reconstruction of the soul. It is a season to test the tension of one’s faith, to try the resonance of a new service, to study a classic text with fresh eyes, or to sacrifice a persistent habit that no longer serves us.
Lent is an invitation to lean over the workbench of our own lives and, with patience and care, tinker ourselves toward the people we were always meant to be.
Love this
Thanks Dana.
I agree. It’s great when tinker is the operative word. It’s when I need to turn the Titanic that I’m in trouble!
Thanks Te.