The Guild of Deferred Improvements

In The Indifferent Realms, where mountains occasionally decided to settle a few yards to the left, provided nobody was paying particularly close attention, there existed a most peculiar guild.

It was known as the Guild of Deferred Improvements.
Its guild hall was enormous.
Not because much was accomplished there.
But because unfinished work was stored there.

Every craftsman joining the guild received a wheelbarrow.
Not for building materials.
For good intentions.

Remarkably, they turned out to be exactly the right size.
It was soon discovered that good intentions were considerably bulkier than bricks.

Inside, endless shelves stretched into the distance, each carefully labelled:
“Almost Finished.”
“Ready for Review.”
“Waiting for Gerald.”
“Just One More Thing.”
“It Should Probably Work.”

The shelves disappeared somewhere into the haze of the hall, so far away that learned scholars seriously debated whether they still occupied the same room or merely represented the natural expansion of human optimism.

Guildmaster Harnock was exceedingly proud of this.

“No one,” he would often proclaim, “examines craftsmanship more thoroughly than we do.”

Visitors were shown magnificent blueprints.

Meticulously detailed drawings.

Exhaustive specifications.

Elegant discussions.

Committees devoted entirely to deciding the appropriate colour of future roof tiles.

Only one thing puzzled the visitors.

There were remarkably few houses standing outside.

One autumn morning, a young apprentice joined the guild.

He possessed little experience.

A perfectly ordinary hammer.

And a most unfortunate habit.

Whenever he finished a brick, he carried it straight to the building site.

Another mason laid the next one.

A carpenter fitted a beam.

The roofer noticed something was crooked.

Someone straightened it.

And the house grew.

The Guild regarded this behaviour with the deepest suspicion.

“You cannot simply bring your work together with everyone else’s immediately!” cried Guildmaster Harnock in horror.

“What if someone discovers a mistake?”

The apprentice blinked.

“That is rather the point.”

The hall fell silent.

An elderly master builder quietly fainted.

The Guild therefore convened a Review Committee.

After lengthy deliberations, the committee concluded that immediate construction was extremely dangerous.

After all, mistakes might become visible.

Mistakes neatly stored away in the warehouse caused considerably less excitement.

Besides, no customer had ever complained about a house that had never been built.

Months passed.

The apprentice’s little cottage had long since been finished.

Children played outside.

Smoke rose from the chimney.

The rain remained reliably outdoors.

People lived there.

Meanwhile, the Guild ceremoniously opened the four hundred and seventy-third review of the Perfect House.

It had never seen its first stone laid.

Yet everyone agreed it would become the finest house never built.

Eventually, the town asked an old witch to settle the dispute.

Witches possessed the rather inconvenient habit of ignoring complicated explanations and observing what actually happened instead.

She looked at both master builders.

She looked at the little cottage where people lived.

She looked at the vast warehouse filled with unfinished work.

Then she thoughtfully scratched her chin.

“You know,” she said at last, “houses are rather peculiar things.”

Everyone leaned forward.

“They only tell you they don’t fit together…”

A brief pause.

“… after you’ve tried putting them together.”

She tapped the apprentice’s hammer with one finger.

“Wood doesn’t negotiate with blueprints.”

Then she tapped one of the bricks.

“And stone couldn’t care less how long your committees have been meeting.”

At last she smiled the smile of a woman who had spent an entire lifetime watching exceptionally intelligent people walk straight past remarkably simple truths.

“You never discover whether things belong together by keeping them apart.”

And, as so often happens with the most important lessons, everyone eventually agreed she was obviously right.

At least until the next committee meeting.

The wheelbarrows for the good intentions were already waiting.