The BUILDERS

 

BOOK the FIFTH

The Self-Action Leadership MODEL

Dedicated to...

My Father—Rex Buckley Jensen—A BUILDER

Rex Buckley Jensen
Circa 1979

And to all BUILDERS—Yesterday, Today, and Forever

Bank of America Plaza
Structural Template for the SAL Model
Downtown Atlanta
Georgia, USA

Construction Process

Self-Action Leadership Model

 Chapter 1

The Builders 

I have always admired BUILDERS.

My dad was a builder. 

Dad with my four older brothers on the construction site
of our family home where I lived for 11 of my first 18 years.
Circa 1975

In conjunction with his two decade career in education as a middle and high school classroom teacher, he was also a licensed contractor in the construction industry. Over the course of my dad's eclectic building career, he built or assembled 76 homes (including our own), 43 apartment units, a log cabin, and many other projects involving wood, brick, sand, soil, stone, and/or flora.

Always an entrepreneur at heart, Dad also started a business building custom-made shelves in customer's garages. He did this—and a variety of other side gigs over the years—to supplement his modest teacher's salary; raising seven kids was not cheap!

JJ kneeling next to a set of finished garage shelves
as an employee of JB Shelving.
Circa 2001

Dad started his shelving business in the late 1980s when my family lived in Mesa, Arizona. My older brothers and I worked in Dad's business during the years we lived at home.

Years later, three of my older brothers carried on Dad's business model in northern Utah to supplement their own incomes as college students and then later as teachers themselves. When I got to college, I also worked in my brothers' business as the lowest grunt on the crew. One brother continues the shelving business today as JB Shelving ("JB"stands for Jensen Brother) working alongside next-generation family members.

Dad's apartment complex under construction
Monticello, Utah
Circa early 1980s.

Click HERE to visit JB Shelving's current website and see Dad's legacy live on through his sons and grandchildren.    

After retiring from his career in construction, education, photography, real estate, trampoline sales, and everything else he did over the years, Dad did something that was classically him. At age 65, he and my step-mom set to work building their dream home on their own land with their own four hands and an occasional hired hand or two. 

Now, you must understand, Dad's dream home is no modest retirement cottage. It is a 47-foot high, 5-story, 8,000 square foot mountain abode complete with four wood-burning fireplaces, a library with thousands of books, a home theater, and other features emblematic of he and my step-mom's unique personalities and stylistic preferences. 

This project would have been audaciously ambitious for a 35-year old ace builder in the prime of his life. For Dad—a retired senior citizen pushing 70—it proved to be one of the most painstaking, yet pleasurable and satisfying undertakings of his life. At one point during the framing process, a strong gust of wind blew down the first two stories of walls. That didn't stop Dad. He simply cleaned up the mess and began again; that's just the kind of man he is.

It took them many years to get the home fully livable, but they have now lived contentedly in it for nearly a decade—and they continue to work on the ongoing project today, despite Dad's advancing age of 81! 

With my Dad in front of the family home he built.
Monticello, Utah
Circa 1982

Infinitely more important than any of his material construction achievements, my father helped my mother build a family of seven children, which would later be joined by seven spouses and 31 grandchildren. 

I greatly admire both of my parents because of the things—and more importantly the lives—they have either built or helped to build through their many talents and efforts in the world of parenting, construction, education, sales, and many other fields.  

For these reasons, I chose to dedicate BOOK the FIFTH to my Dad, whom I love and admire as my father, and more specifically to my Parents, both of whom were extraordinary human beings and impressive builders in their own ways and right. 

As a wee lad growing up in rural southeastern Utah, I was a classic "Daddy's Boy." Wherever my dad was, that was where I wanted to be; and wherever my dad went, that is where I wanted to go. 

It was a thrilling time and place to be a little boy because my dad was always on the move and continually working on a wide array of different construction-oriented projects. From getting wood up the mountain to building flower beds in the backyard; and from pouring concrete walks to adding on to the house, it seemed there was always something new and exciting going on around the land he owned and the home and apartments he built.  

A very young JJ on an outdoor
adventure with Dad.
Circa 1984

Throughout my childhood, one of Dad's and my favorite things to do together was visit dams, and especially new earthen dam under construction. He'd drive up as close as possible to the dam site so we could soak in the beautiful views of massive bulldozers, dump trucks, excavators, and wheel tractor scrapers busy at work. Those gargantuan earthen (or concrete) dams were as beautiful to Dad and I as they are functional and important to society. Watching those enormous machines at work on such projects always provided us with a thrill.   

To this day, one of my hobbies is to visit construction sites and watch experts build homes, buildings, roads, bridges, and skyscrapers. I especially admire master masons and have a special place in my heart for bricklayers. To me, it is awe-inspiring to behold a mason mix and then manipulate mortar into creative and precise outlays of beautiful brick or elegant stone.

To me, some of the most glorious sights and sounds in all the world come from an artist or builder as he or she fashions something with one's hands that is either attractive, useful, or both. 

Crooked brick and mortar garden box Dr. JJ built himself
Conroe (Houston) Texas
Circa 2013

When I was a young husband and father, I lived for nearly a decade in the greater Houston, Texas area—one of the fastest growing metropolitan areas in the United States—where, much to my glee, there was never any shortage of building, housing, and highway projects underway. Such work is marvelous in my eyes, partly because it is so important and useful to society, and partly because I lack the knowledge and skills to replicate it effectively on my own—as the crooked brick garden box in my Texas backyard attests!  

BOOK the FIFTH is further dedicated to BUILDERS in general—meaning anyone who has ever built anything sturdy and useful, including: homes, buildings, bridges, offices, schools, skyscrapers, furniture, machines, tools, computers, needful products and services of all kinds, pedagogical texts and curricula, good books, honest and upright governments, nations, states, communities, organizations, and most importantly—families, marriages, and individual lives of character, integrity, and virtue.  

Anyone can be a critic or a cynic, and sadly our world is full of both. 

It doesn't take much creativity, education, or planning to critique, criticize, or tear something down. But it takes an authentic, courageous, knowledgeable, skilled, determined, and persistent person to build something up.  

SAL Mantra

Anyone can tear something down.

But it takes a self-action leader to build something up!

This Life Leadership textbook was written in hopes that YOU might become a BUILDER of whatever it is your talents, skills, education, and drive equip you to construct. More importantly, it was written to help and inspire you in the construction of the most important building project of all—your own character and life, and the lives you will touch and influence.  

Become a BUILDER

The world has too many critics; it needs more creators. 

        The world has too many theorists; it needs more practitioners.

                The world has too much deconstruction; it needs more construction and reconstruction.

        The world has too many pundits and planners; it needs more players and producers. 

The world is full of good ideas, noble dreams, and worthy visions; it needs more people who realize them. (1)

I therefore salute the builders; and call upon every man, woman, boy, and girl

        In this world who is not a builder to become one.

                Join me, and together we'll make something magnificent of your life.

        And in the process, imagine, create, and build things that will leave the world a better place

Than you found it, making YOU one of the honored and revered persons known simply as:

A BUILDER.

—JRJ

Constructive Poetry

As a grade school student at Hermosa Vista Elementary in Mesa, Arizona, I began a love affair with poetry that has continued to deepen and mature throughout my life. 

Excerpt from Chaucer in Old English
Geoffrey Chaucer is considered the
"Father of English Poetry" 

It all began in fifth grade when my teacher, Bridgette Owens—who was passionate about poetry herself—serially introduced my classmates and I to a collection of famous poems—one each week of the school year. Among these poems were: Paul Revere's Ride and Casey at the Bat.

This budding passion for poetry was further fueled the following year when my sixth grade teacher, Nell Jean, assigned us to compile a personalized poetry anthology of our favorite poems from famous authors in conjunction with our own budding attempts at haiku, limerick, verse, and free verse. 

These assignments were landmark literary adventures for my budding intellect and served as liberal draughts of poetic ambrosia quenching the thirst of my prosodic proclivities. In time, I came to especially appreciate, enjoy, and value poems composed with a specific, constructive, and positive purpose while still maintaining their rhythmic richness and rhyming flourish.

My personal copy of Cook's Anthology
Purchased in 2001 with birthday money
from my Grandmother Jensen

Later on, I came across a book of poetry in my dad's office library. It was a concise anthology entitled: One Hundred and One Famous Poems, edited by Roy J. Cook. 

This little volume introduced me to some of the most legendary poets and poems in the history of English and American literature. From Wordsworth and Whittier to Kipling and Guest; and from Emerson, Dickinson, Burroughs, and Wilcox to the Great War poets (i.e. Kilmer, McCrae, and Seeger), such timeless works as: Ode on Intimations of Immortality, Maud Muller, If, Home, Each and All, The Rhodora, Not in Vain, Waiting, Solitude, Trees, In Flanders Fields, and I Have a Rendezvous with Death—among many others—deeply impacted my mind, heart, soul, and life and inspired me to become a poet and writer myself. 

Click HERE to buy Dr. JJ's Poems

Above all, I became acquainted with the work of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, whose verse I have come to deeply cherish, memorize, and otherwise emblazon upon the very sinews of my soul. His poem, A Psalm of Life, which I memorably recall my Uncle Hyrum once quoting by memory from the pulpit, was one of the works that inspired me to enter the self-help and personal development field. I, of course, committed this piece to memory myself and later published a collection of my own verse, which I entitled: Psalms of Life—in honor of Longfellow and his eponymous poem.

In addition to this masterpiece and other works by Longfellow reprinted in Cook's pocket anthology (e.g. The Day is Done and The Children's Hour), I came across another masterpiece of his entitled: The Builders. Cook appropriately positioned this particular piece at the very beginning of his famous anthology, making it extra easy to stumble across as I thumbed through the pages in search of poetic gems.

You might well say that seeds of the SAL Model were planted within me the moment I first came across this magnificent nine-stanza sampling of Longfellow's finest verse.

The BUILDERS

ALL are architects of Fate,

   Working in these walls of Time;

Some with massive deeds and great,

   Some with ornaments of rhyme.

Nothing useless is, or low;

   Each things in its place is best;

And what seems but idle show

   Strengthens and supports the rest.

For the structure that we raise,

   Time is with materials filled;

Our to-days and yesterdays

   Are the blocks with which we build.

Truly shape and fashion these;

   Leave no yawning gaps between;

Think not, because no man sees,

   Such things will remain unseen.

In the elder days of Art,

   Builders wrought with greatest care

Each minute and unseen part;

   For the gods see everywhere.

Let us do our work as well,

   Both the unseen and the seen;

Make the house, where Gods may dwell,

   Beautiful, entire, and clean.

Else our lives are incomplete,

   Standing in these walls of Time,

Broken stairways, where the feet

   Stumble as they seek to climb.

Build to-day, then, strong and sure,

   With a firm and ample base;

And ascending and secure

   Shall to-morrow find its place.

Thus alone can we attain

   To those turrets, where they eye

Sees the world as one vast plain,

   And one boundless reach of sky. (2) 

—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

This poem, and many others like it, have filled me with an appreciation for poetry's capacity to teach moral lessons in beautiful, inspiring, and memorable ways. Such poems perpetually fill my mind, heart, and soul with pleasure, joy, and gratitude, influencing me to memorize them for ready recitation at appropriate opportunities of edification, education, or just pleasure and entertainment. More significantly, they motivate me to work hard and strive diligently to make something grand out of my life—and to influence others to make something grand out of theirs.  

In Your Journal

• If you were a licensed contractor, what kinds of construction projects would you like to build, and why? 

• What kind of metaphysical construction projects (e.g. character building and personality refinement) would you like to undertake as part of your SAL Study?

• What "Builders" (e.g. leaders, parents, teachers, coaches, mentors, siblings, friends, etc.) have helped to build or otherwise positively impact your life?  

—Dr. JJ

Wednesday, January 8, 2025

Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, USA

Author's Note: This is the 424th Blog Post Published by Freedom Focused LLC since November 2013 and the 233rd consecutive weekly blog published since August 31, 2020.   

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Chapter 1 Notes

1.  The literary style and syntax employed in this otherwise original poem was borrowed from a similar style used in paragraph 16 of an October 2000 speech entitled, The Joy of Womanhood, by Margaret D. Nadauld. My thanks to Mrs. Nadauld for inspiring me with her stirring delivery and well-crafted prose, which I have seen fit to imitate herein.

2.  Longfellow, H.W. The Day is Done, reprinted from The Poetical Works of Longfellow (1912). Henry Frowde, Oxford University Press. Page 186.