The Sanford Berenberg Experience: Message of the Day

Good Morning,

This past weekend, besides taking time to be thankful for many of things that I am blessed to have in my life, I found some surprising, to me at least, things about myself.

On Friday, I started sewing some patches on a new Adult Leader Boy Scout Uniform shirt I purchased close to a year ago, but had not fully prepared. I had already put on two patches, one of them was sort of crooked, but passable. I found the guide showing where each patch went and started adding a square patch on the arm just under one of the other patches.

I lined up the patch and used pins to hold the patch in place as I sewed it on.

This was nothing new to me, I am an Eagle Scout and have sewed patches on uniforms off and on for the last 30 years or so.

Well…first I miscalculated how much thread I needed to go all the way around, even though I thought I premeasured. Then with the second set of thread, I sewed the arm to the back of the shirt. Finally when I fixed all the mistakes and with my third length of thread I finished the job and it only took the better part of two hours (with the standard distractions).

Looking in horror, the patch was cockeyed. And not by a little, some eighth of an inch off, very noticeable.

After saying a few choice explicatives I threw in the towel. I cut the thread I sewed on the patch on (what a mess) and then proceeded to pin on all the other patches that were to go on the shirt. The next morning, I dropped the shirt off at a local tailor and paid him to put them on for me. I know it will look great.

It was not a difficult task. It was not something I had never done before. Heck I did some of it last year with better results.

Why was I unable to do a seemingly simple task like I could in years past?

Besides the obvious ‘goof-ball’ answers you are all thinking, there is a deeper reason.

As we age, we change.

I remember when I was in my mid-twenties, I was asked by a 70 year old co-worker, to help do some plumbing work under his house. He was great at all sorts of work and I wondered why he did not crawl under his own house to change the elbow.

As I did the job and crawled out, his wife was there and as my coworker looked on embarrassed, she said, ‘sometimes you have to admit that you can no longer do some work’.

While I am not 70, yet, I am getting older. Had I rolled up my sleeves and spent another four or five hours sewing on patches, I may have done a better job, or I might have thrown the whole lot of fabric into the garbage.

Sometimes we need to step back and acknowledge we are not an island. That we need help.

It is a humbling thought, but one that will save us a lot of stress and grief…. And in my case, embarrassment.

Enjoy!

Sanford Berenberg

Sanford@berenberg.net
http://www.berenberg.net

http://sanfordberenberg.blogspot.com/
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