The Present as Hammer

 First published: 28 August 2025. Updated: 7 February 2026

Introduction

This blog offers a space where anyone weathering life's blows may find hope, perspective, and a quiet sense of possibility. It's about forging your own steel despite life's hammers; about understanding that life is not easy, and that redefining courage helps us take small steps forward.

With hammers and forging such a central theme, I use the blacksmith's workshop as our guiding metaphor. Picture a traditional forge: fire, anvil, hammer, and the slow, deliberate work of shaping steel. Initially, there's smoke, a super-heated fire, an anvil or two, different tools such as tongs, hammers, and a lot of hammering. The heat of the fire in which the blacksmith lays a steel object, what tools they use to shape it, how frequently the object must return to the fire, and the time it takes all depend on the object being made.

I must emphasise that some situations require additional support, professional help, or systemic change—and that wisdom lies in knowing the difference. This post is not a motivation to push through when common sense says pause. Life in the workshop works alongside, not instead of, professional support.

Times in the Workshop

I want to suggest that a difficult period in our lives is not merely time spent in the workshop but that life itself is the workshop because we are meant to continue growing. Is not the present, the now, a hammer?

Looking back to our yesterdays, we remember how our knowledge has increased and how we've changed our ways of speaking, thinking, and acting. We remember what we learnt. But that's it. We remember, move on, and do not return to it. I'm referring here to social or historic times, not to individual experiences that we enjoyed or hated, and which built or broke us.

Tomorrow, though we plan for it some, is not here yet. Tomorrow is a bridge across a river. We know we must cross the bridge when we get to it. However, the route to the bridge may change, or any number of events may prevent or promote the crossing. It is no use then to panic about it today.

Our yesterdays and tomorrows all had and will have a today in them. The present time, today, the here where our feet are on the ground, is here now. It's the tension between yesterday and tomorrow, the step between the past and the future; it's a life time-giver and it demands that we make the most of it—now. This brings us to a crucial realisation about the present moment.

 It’s the now, which could be something new or novel, or untried or unused, that is a hammer.

 It's the now, which could be something new or novel, untried or unused, that is a hammer. It's the now that points to our life's goal and determines what we leave behind when we die. If time now is the hammer, then the place is the forge, with both working together to shape us.

Place as the Forge

In medieval blacksmith forges, fires were started in the fire pot and covered with coal, creating smoke. Extinguishing the fire also made smoke. In life's workshop, whether a fire starts or ends, we get smoke in our eyes. Smoke may distract us, but it doesn't stop the shaping.

The forge (noun) symbolises where our steel is heated before being hammered into a desired form. To forge (verb) implies moving ahead slowly or with difficulty, acting, no matter what. This interplay became vivid early in my early career.

In My Own Forge

I worked in public relations, planning visits by dignitaries. In my late twenties, absurdly shy and introverted, I questioned why they'd use someone who preferred words in print to welcomings in public. They thought I was able enough. I lost the argument.

I wrote minutely detailed plans—from airport tarmac to aircraft stairs homeward. I envisaged everything that could go wrong and planned for it, clearing plans with everyone involved. Look at the plan, I thought, not at me.

Despite my best efforts to remain invisible, I was invited to bars and meals, dragged onto dance floors, posed for photographs, and even invited overseas. Constantly tense and nervous, I smiled and checked the plans. At the trip's end, I completed paperwork and reports, then took leave to sleep for a week.

Feedback from visitors and hosts was glowing. I received pats on the back and bonuses. After this first visit, I was given five more to arrange. My meticulous planning remained, but later I became the one inviting others and dragging them onto dance floors. The hammers of the now had shaped me. Somewhere along the way, my head no longer needed to quiet my heart. They'd learned to work together when action was required.

The Act Workshop

The now forces us to act: to look, question, analyse, understand, evaluate, plan, and anticipate. The workshop is a place of work, not merely silent wishes, or gut feelings. We share it with others, so we must connect, consider their perspectives, and weigh pros and cons before major decisions. The now means reading our reality, noticing the hammers, and using them rather than merely reacting in fear.

Look. Question. Analyse. Understand. Evaluate. Plan. Anticipate. Act Now.

If the workshop had a name, it would be Act. Here, we participate fully in reality without fear of the fire, thinking of what we leave behind. Do something; make something happen rather than waiting for someone else to move first. Practically, this involves daily constructive acts: fixing what's broken, making that avoided phone call, helping in a community clean-up, and create something new by hand. These are the sparks of the now.

Conclusion

In the Act workshop, we learn, love, and live amongst the sparks flying as our life's purpose is hammered into shape by the now.

Life's workshop isn't meant to be comfortable; it's meant to be shaping. The heat, blows, and smoke aren't wasted if they move us towards becoming more than we were yesterday.

Every now asks us to choose how we'll act and what trace we'll leave. Some lives fade like sealed mausoleums: silent, forgotten when the last person who remembers us is gone. Others become museums: preserved as history, interesting but no longer alive. But some lives, hammered in the fire of the present, rise as monuments. Not because life was easy or perfect, but because choices made in the heat left something others could lean on, learn from, or build upon.

We cannot escape the forge. We can only decide what shape the fire and hammering will give us. The present isn't a place to hide or wait out. It's the only place where we can act, create, and endure. Go do what you must. Work. Step into the fire. Leave behind not ashes but steel.

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