The Power of Leverage

AKA: Undressing Petunia, Part 2

I was stuck. Dead in the water. Nowhere to go. Beaten. Done. Tilt. Game over. The obstacle was immovable. Insurmountable. And it was this:

A water intake fill.

This little feature sticks out of Petunia’s side and is used to fill her on-board water tank:

The aluminum skin isn’t coming off Petunia until this fixture comes off. So I removed the screws and took a wrench to it. And I yanked. And yanked. And hammered. And swore. I sprayed the seam with enough WD-40 to choke a woolly mammoth. And I yanked and swore some more.

Nuthin’. This baby wasn’t budging. Not even by a micro-spec. Stubborn. Intractable.

I finally turned to my last resort and one of the best tools in my whole arsenal: Facebook.

That’s where a few good people told me about leverage. “Just slip a three-foot pipe over the wrench handle and you’ll be able to spin off the water fill with one hand.” Haha. Riiiiiight.

I didn’t believe it for a second, but I don’t own a blow torch, and was therefore out of options. Somewhere from the depths of my memory, I also recalled the whisperings of my old friend, Greek mathematician, physicist, engineer, inventor and astronomer, Archimedes, who said:

“Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand, and I will move the earth.”

Archimedes (c. 287–212 bc)

So I gave it a whirl. Literally.

Low and behold…it worked! That baby spun off like it was made of butter.

I’m considering the power of leverage more and more these days.

Leverage is a magic wand. It isn’t a shortcut. It isn’t cheating and it isn’t avoiding what’s in front of me. Rather, leverage is the efficient intersection of physics, available resources and brain power.

For mere mortals, leverage works like magic in the physical world as well as in the realms of spirit and goodwill. If you give just a little bit extra–do a little bit more, go the extra mile, or inch, offer a little bit more of yourself–the results will be exponentially greater than the investment.

As someone once told me: You don’t have to work twice as hard to get twice the results.

I’ve heard it said, “Work smarter, not harder.” I don’t even know what that means. I only know of one way to get things done: Put your head down and plow through. (See “The Only Way Out is Through” for one example.)

Plod forward, learn as you go. Do better next time. (See The Great Potato Chip Explosion, for another example.)

As you’ll see in upcoming blogs on Petunia, I learn lessons the hard way. I’m stubborn, intractable. But I do learn. One might say I leverage my past experiences to do better, be better, and get better results in the future. Mostly.

In the undressing of Petunia–removing her aluminum skin piece by piece, screw by screw–I’ve reached five conclusions about the general restoration of things, be they a 57-year old trailer full of wood rot, a broken relationship, or a messy life:

1. The Only Way Out is Through
2. The Power of Leverage
3. Shelter from the Storm
4. Ask for Help, for Pity’s Sake!
5. You are More than You Know

The latter is the most profound and powerful thing of all: that you can do more, be more, achieve more than you previously thought possible. Your feelings of limitation are paper dragons.

That said, it always helps to recognize your blind spots and admit your real limits (Ask for Help, for Pity’s Sake!). The cool thing about that, however, is that immense strength is poised in those very shadows.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Since the only way out is though…stay tuned. Coming up next: “Shelter from the Storm” and how I fell through the Petunia’s roof. (Not my brightest moment.)