Repairing the Self: Lessons From a Popular British TV Series

We are—I think most would acknowledge—a future-oriented society. New things, we believe, are preferable to old ones. Fast is better than slow. Small is just the prelude to big. Who wants an old garden tractor, laminate countertop, or under-equipped cell phone when there are fancier versions out there? The world is moving ahead at an accelerating pace. The only way to keep up is through replacement.

Material objects are one focus of our quest to stay current. However, the idea of disposability permeates other cultural arenas as well. How many companies prefer the fresh-faced outsider to the wizened loyalist for their high-profile positions? Spouses, grown weary of the daily grind, opt for someone younger, perkier, and readier to amuse. Generations of friends, as Homer said of the leaves, come and go. Midlife—and later—finds people moving to new locales where they imagine themselves beginning again. Restlessness, once of the province of the young, is endemic.

Few readers would admit to such transience. Selectively at least, we respect the old just as we make way for the new. Still, it is hard to escape the idea that life (whether personal or societal) has distinct periods or stages, each with its own demands. Addressing these means learning new skills, adopting new values, and meeting new people. Much as we redecorate our homes and update our possessions, so we refurbish our ways of being. The alternative, it seems, is stagnation, even obsolescence.

"The Repair Shop"

Is there another model for embracing these challenges? In a previous post (“Personality Props: Material Objects and the Self”), I referenced a British television series, “The Repair Shop,” popular in the United Kingdom since 2017 and now available through various streaming services in the United States. Each episode features three sets of people who bring treasured (but tattered) objects to talented craftspeople for possible repair. Will those repairers—experts in metallurgy, woodworking, clock making, musical instruments, ceramics, leatherworking, and the like—bring the items back to some semblance of their former glory? Inevitably, they do.

At one level, the program is a paean to craftsmanship, with all its patience, attentiveness, ingenuity, and skill. That said, material items—before in hopeless disarray and now miraculously restored—are not the show’s real subject. Instead, the series turns on the meaning of objects as touchstones of experience and, more than that, as conduits of interpersonal relationships. Long ago, the object at hand—perhaps an old wallet used once to paddle a shipwrecked sailor to safety or a decrepit accordion played at family gatherings—was central to the life of someone dear. Now that person is gone. Restoring the object is a way of restoring that person. To hold and appreciate one is to hold and appreciate the other.

Just as the series repudiates throwaway culture, so it opposes another popular series, “Antiques Roadshow,” in both its British and American versions. To be sure, that latter production honors old things; however, it centers on the revelation—and we all wait for this—of its worth in monetary terms. Especially satisfying is the treasure acquired cheaply, perhaps from a deceased uncle, yard sale, or dumpster.

“Repair Shop” shuns that investment mentality. The value of any item is only its meaning to the person who brings it to the shop and, more expansively, to that person’s family or community. There is no talk of money; the program pays for repairs.

Boo-birds may criticize the program for being overly sentimental (with its frequently tearful revelations) and for lionizing earlier generations (especially those who fought in World War I and II). Presumably, they were as flawed as we are. More pertinently, one can ask whether the reconstruction of material objects compares at all to the reconstruction of human lives.

Lessons About Human Relations

I make no claims that people are equivalent to dented teakettles and rusty bicycles. But I do think certain lessons about human relations can be drawn from the way these craftspeople treat the objects presented to them. Consider the five lessons below.

1. Substantive change requires both persistence and patience. Hucksters entice us with fad diets and easy-money investments. A better model of change is one that anticipates difficulties, even setbacks, along the way and includes plans to address these as they arise. The craftspeople at "The Repair Shop" have a good sense of what problems may arise and how they will confront them. They understand that restoration takes time. Routinely, they comment: “I’ve worked hard to do this one piece; I have 99 more to go.” Angry persistence will not achieve the desired effects; neither will compliant patience.

The same applies to personal changes. Many of us envision the end results of some desired change (perhaps a fitter body or knowledge of a foreign language). We forget that the real attainment is the development of altered life-habits (such as exercising or self-learning). The art—or in this analogy, the craft—of living is more important than any list of accomplishments.

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2. Restoration is not renovation. Like Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray, some of us seek eternal youth—with its abundant energy, firm body, and unlined face. More than anything, we want the young person’s optimism, their belief in possibility.

Our better selves remember that youth is fraught with its own difficulties. Indiscretions from those days may hamper us still. Whatever the character of that past, we know that the reasonable strategy is to confront each life stage as well as we can. Looking back, we should take pride in the better things we’ve done and the relationships we’ve sustained.

The people bringing battered treasures to "The Repair Shop" are very clear about this. They do not want their item made new; they want its history retained. A completely refurbished doll or kite is no longer “itself.”

In that light, the rest of us should try to incorporate changes into who we have been rather than renounce our past or defy the aging process. Remember that Dorian Gray is a grotesque. The timeless present of Bill Murray’s character in “Groundhog Day” is a nightmare from which he cannot awake.

3. Relationships are foundations of personal esteem. Again, the objects presented to "The Repair Shop" are typically of modest economic value. What makes them important is their role in human relationships.

There is a tendency in all of us to try to perfect ourselves by self-borne activities. Presumably, those fitter, smarter, more polished selves will be more “attractive” to others. We will be happier.

Self-improvement is useful in its own way. However, humans have always lived in groups, which provide them with standards, boundaries, and support. Nurturing those connections—and more concretely, those people—is the complementary way to build self-esteem. At some level, we live amidst the judgments of the persons we care about, and who care about us in turn.

4. Utility is not the only standard of worth. Future-oriented societies are commonly youth-obsessed and technologically entranced. Young people adapt faster to changing conditions; they easily learn skills the rest of us struggle to master. Predictably, society looks to that rising generation for technological responses to its problems.

Where does that leave older people, especially those who have moved on from the responsibilities of occupation and parenting? Are they “useless” and, thus, valueless?

Be clear that technical efficiency is only one, rather narrow, standard for the good society—or the good person. Good people are those who bear witness to the truth, behave honorably, and treat others compassionately. They remind the community of some of the important possibilities of human engagement, because they have lived through them.

The objects brought to "The Repair Shop" are distant forerunners of what we have now. What matters is the degree to which they manifest the ingenuity—and sometimes the heroism—of previous generations. To ponder such commitments is to appreciate those generations.

5. There is a role for professional care. Many of the people coming to "The Repair Shop" have tried to fix their own items. They have failed. In the same way, the rest of us have tried to heal our own ailments without success. Sometimes, we compound our problems.

Self-help and support from loving others are profoundly important. But many challenges to self-integrity profit from the attention of those who have spent their careers treating people with these issues.

Technical expertise is valuable. However, the best professionals actively “care” for their patients. They engage deeply with their difficulties, monitor their progress, and promote their general well-being. That willingness to see a job in its broader context is the abiding contribution of the craftspeople at "The Repair Shop." That same attentiveness is the challenge for those offering personal support.

Some say “The Repair Shop” is about our fear of death. Perhaps. What matters is that we comprehend mortality in a way that honors rather than shuns our passing.