Nailed It

“I’d rather be a hammer than a nail” say Simon and Garfunkel.
And I wonder, “what would I rather be?”
A hammer is a tool that is used to drive the nail. Without the hammer the nail is pretty useless however it’s job as a hammer is to beat the nail down. It has to drive the nail so hard that it will penetrate and hold durable pieces of a planned whole together. The hammer has an obligation to drive hard but not too hard and it needs to drive at precisely the right angle or it will destroy the nail rendering it useless. But once the hammer has driven the nails it is no longer useful. Also, as a tool, it is only useful if it is being used by someone else to do something that it will only be part of for a short time.
The nail simply has to hold things together and yet it cannot do that and is basically useless without taking the very hard and repetitive beatings from the hammer. The hammer that is doing someone else’s bidding. But once the nail is driven, granted it is driven straight and it didn’t cave and bend incorrectly under the pressure, then it has a job to do for the remainder of the existence of the structure it is holding. But the nail is usually not alone in its job, it works together with a team to hold.
So I wonder, would I rather be a hammer than a nail?
And I think no, I am not so good at driving hard and I’m not too good at being a tool.
So maybe I am a nail, and all I really need to do is hold it together and stay straight in spite of all the  unconscionable tools beating me down.