I’ve been a bit busy fixing parts of houses. Especially door closers have been a hot topic, which keeps me super excited about the newly acquired knowledge.
A door closer is what you often see on the entrance door of a building. Usually it’s a metal box slightly smaller than a 1-liter milk carton attached to the door, with a V-shaped arm connecting to the door frame. Its primary function is to close the door using the spring built in the unit, combined with the secondary function to moderate the swinging speed right before closing to avoid hard slams. In a lot of cases, there also is a function to hold the door in fully opened position.
It is not uncommon that a house is equipped with a broken or badly adjusted door closer. The particular cases I fixed include a heavy fire-proof grade metal door that slams back into the door frame and a door that doesn’t stop in opened position though quite often desired to. It actually isn’t a complicated job, just entails tightening loose bolts, turning adjuster bolts, lubricating pivots, and replacing oil-shedding units if broken.
The results are awesome. You’ll be free from the fear of butchering the house cat into two pieces or the inconvenience of having to grab a door stopper bar or weight every time. Although, the inconveniences are something people forget easily once things are back in the comfortable state.
It makes me think. Why were such problems, which could have been solved any time with just a little bit of effort, left untouched? Why was the cause investigation, which was logically a straight line, put in the mystery unsolved box? It’s a shame. It’s such a shame to live without knowledge and skills you could reach out and grab, along with the rational and comfortable results that follow.
Then I realize. The door closer truth came to me only because I happened to reach right there. There are various, innumerable other things far beyond my eyesight, just like door closers to most people. They may be, in part, tips on cooking or doing dishes, how to choose insurances, or how to use cell phones, but for the most part, lie vastly beyond the area of the universe I currently cover.
So I pray. When the next door closer comes to me, may my curiosity and inquiring mind turn it into my own flesh and blood. May my abilities allow me to grasp unknown issues as aggregation of known phenomena. Oh and may the doors I just fixed keep functioning at least for a while.