DIY: Why we think we can’t do anything for ourselves

I was at a housewarming party last weekend where I met two new people who told me the same thing.

I was talking with the first person about my roommate’s wobbly loft bed when she told me, “It will probably be fine. People think construction is a complicated black art of a thing, but it’s really pretty simple.”

I was talking with the second person about all the interesting stuff he’d learned at his new job, when he said, “There’s actually a supermarket nearby that will make mozzarella to order. It’s fantastic. But making your own is cheese is pretty easy.”

The first person was a woman who’d been managing construction for years. She knew what she was talking about. The second person was a sculptor who had started working at a cheese store in New York just a few months prior. He was modest, but he too, was telling the truth.

Two points stuck with me that night:

1) Division of labor has conditioned us to think that making things requires expertise, even when it doesn’t.

2) When we discover that we can make things ourselves, we are delighted.

As mass production gives us everything we could desire cheaply, perfectly, and efficiently, it’s only natural that we start desiring the exact opposite: things that take time and contain imperfections, things that are ineffecient.

It may make a whole lot more sense for me to spend a few dollars for cheese at a supermarket, but making my own cheese is a treat, and an experience that makes me a whole lot happier. Whether it’s cheese or a loft bed or trendy stuffed animals, the itch to create is strong within us, and it grows stronger the longer we resist scratching it.

This is a simple fact that points to a growing market for something in-between. A place for people who still don’t have the time to really do it themselves, but are itching to try.