The Clockmaker's Apprentice
In a small village nestled between two slow-moving rivers, there lived an old clockmaker named Master Elior. His workshop smelled of cedarwood and oil, and every surface held gears, springs, pendulums, and tiny screws that glittered like captured stars.
Elior had been repairing and building clocks for fifty years, and villagers said his timepieces could outlast the people who wound them. Above his workbench, carved into wood in careful calligraphy, was a phrase that no one but he seemed to understand:
"What I cannot create, I do not understand."
One spring morning, a curious boy named Bram knocked on the workshop door. "I want to learn the secrets of time," he said. "I want to know how clocks work."
Elior looked at him over round spectacles. "Do you now? Then stay, sweep the floor, and watch."
And Bram stayed. For weeks, he swept and watched. He memorized the names of parts, listened to ticking rhythms, and studied how the clockmaker's hands moved like dancers through time.
One day, Bram declared, "I think I understand clocks now."
Elior didn't smile. He slid a wooden box toward the boy. Inside were parts for a pocket watch—gears, plates, a mainspring, and a delicate balance wheel.
"Then build one."
Bram stared at the pieces. "But I don't know how to put them together."
Elior simply repeated, "What I cannot create, I do not understand."
So Bram began. He fumbled, snapped a gear tooth, installed the spring backwards, and dropped a screw in a crack in the floor. But with every mistake, he learned. Over months, his fingers grew patient, and his mind, precise. He listened to the watch parts the way sailors listen to wind.
At last, a day came when Bram snapped the case shut on a completed watch. It ticked—steady, alive, faithful to time.
"I understand," he whispered.
Elior smiled then, as if hearing a long-anticipated chime. "Now you do."
Years passed, and when Elior's hands grew too old to shape time, Bram became the village clockmaker. Above his own workbench, he carved the same words into cedar:
"What I cannot create, I do not understand."
And sometimes, when children knocked on his door, he gave them a broom, a box of broken gears, and the chance to begin.
(This story is donated to the public domain.)
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"Wisdom begins with wonder." - Socrates
"Learning happens thru gentleness."
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