Back when I was in first or second grade, during a quiz, I learned that one of my classmates didn’t have a pencil. So I lent her mine and then went outside the classroom, surveying the corridors and school grounds for a discarded pencil lead to fit inside a lollipop stick that I found, feeling confident that I would find one. And I did.

Pleased with myself, I returned to my seat and finished the quiz, feeling the beginning of a “handyman” identity and discovering firsthand the perspective that if you look around well enough, probably the solution to most problems could just be lying around you. That there could be value in something that someone has discarded—and, perhaps more distantly, that you don’t have to stress your life becoming rich in order to find means and ways.

I somewhat get what Annie Dillard said:

“The world is fairly studded and strewn with pennies cast broadside from a generous hand. But — and this is the point — who gets excited by a mere penny? It is dire poverty indeed when a man is so malnourished and fatigued that he won’t stoop to pick up a penny. But if you cultivate a healthy poverty and simplicity, so that finding a penny will literally make your day, then, since the world is in fact planted in pennies, you have with your poverty bought a lifetime of days.”