Quest for a fulfilling life

The quest for a truly fulfilling life: As more and more of us search for richer lives, the result will be a kinder society

When I was 22, I wanted to be a thatcher. I had a completely romantic view of the life I would lead: I would work outside all day in the countryside, practising a craft I'd seen my thatcher friend, Mark, do with almost casual ease.

Then, in the evenings - because the days would demand so little from me other than the natural vigour of youth - I would go home and write great novels. Thus, body and soul would both be satisfied.

So I asked Mark, a master thatcher of some ten years' standing, to train me.

He took a drag on his roll-up, sucked on his enormous moustache and breathed: 'OK. You can start next week.'

I beamed. But that was before he added: 'You'll have to sign on for seven years. It will take me two years for you to be any use at all, two years to repay the money it took to train you - and then I want another three years of work from you before you go off and nick all my customers.'

My easy future dissolved there and then, since seven years - seven years - at the age of 22 seemed an almost unimaginable commitment.

What I wanted was a quick mastery of easy skills - and a heavenly, sunshine-filled future that tied me to nothing but personal gratification.

Well, 33 years later, Mark is still thatching in Hampshire, still mastering his craft. And me? Well, I am leading a very different life to the one I envisaged then.

For the past six months, however, I have been dipping my toe back in the water of craftsmanship, while filming a new television series.

It is one I feel taps into a deep need most of us have to stop, take stock and reconsider values that seem to have been cast aside in the scramble for money and easy consumption over the past few decades.

Craftsmanship is, admittedly, an unlikely subject for television - and one that would have been derided ten years ago as 'hopelessly irrelevant' to most people. But the tide appears to have changed.

And not because thatching, blacksmithing, stonemasonry and weaving have suddenly become essential skills that every commuter or working mother must master.

No, it is because we now recognise that the skills and values of craftsmen and women are wholly admirable - and could enrich us all - even if we never fully master them ourselves.

In these uncertain, somewhat perilous times, many of us are pausing to take stock. And, for many, this means looking to our past to learn more about how we might live in the present.

At times when life seems unsure, we crave reassurances we can rely upon, and a measure of self-reliance and resilience that we suddenly find we may well need to employ.

I firmly believe we need a return to the values that foster care, skill, respect - and trust. And I believe this for one very simple reason: we would all be so much happier as a result, both as individuals and as a society.

• Mastercrafts is on BBC2 at 9pm on Fridays.

Text: Monty Don
Read the full article here: Daily Mail