Unsolicited Advice from An Adjustable Wrench

It was Steinbeck who wrote of advice “nobody wants it. It’s a giver’s present.” And so I will give this one word of advice to you, and in so doing, a gift to me. ‘Adjust’

Are you feeling down? A global pandemic can do that to a soul, or a tool. At the least this is a major inconvenience. At worst, you have lost your job, your health, your loved ones, or maybe all of it. Or perhaps it is Weltschmerz, which Steinbeck defines in the same novel as “the world sadness that rises into the soul like a gas and spreads despair so that you probe for the offending event and can find none.”

And now the calendar tells us that it is time to gather and be thankful. That ain’t easy. What with pandemics and weltscherzes abound. The static 3 millimeter wrench looks at anything but a 3 millimeter hex bolt as an insurmountable problem. But you’re not an inflexible wrench, designed for only one specific task. You my friend are adjustable, and so, adjust. What that means for your specific circumstances, I do not know.

Though I do know this, like most advice, what I offer here will almost certainly fall on ear protected ears, it matters not to me. I thank me for my present.

Helping you loosen up,

Alvin, the adjustable wrench