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by rektide 1156 days ago
I've no strong opinions on Jobs, don't know much, but it is wonderful to see something like this echoed:

> There’s lots of ways to be, as a person. And some people express their deep appreciation in different ways. But one of the ways that I believe people express their appreciation to the rest of humanity is to make something wonderful and put it out there.

> And you never meet the people. You never shake their hands. You never hear their story or tell yours. But somehow, in the act of making something with a great deal of care and love, something’s transmitted there. And it’s a way of expressing to the rest of our species our deep appreciation. So we need to be true to who we are and remember what’s really important to us.

The world can feel superficial & shallow, results are so often murky. Being a person who gets themselves into a position where you can be making wonderful high-quality things, where you can invest care & end up with something robust & Real... it's a "sacrement" to being people, to goodness. It matters.

These kinds of lessons I feel like have to be learned really hard ways. Trying to find & calibrate your values is so hard. Packets of wisdom like this don't show up, don't have the apparent worth that experience latter makes one appreciate. It's nice to have a couple good waymarkers, good pointers, towards this value system I recognize out there.

2 comments

As simple as it is, this idea manifests in even the alignment of the screws on an outlet cover being horizontal and aligned to each other instead of random wherever they end up.

It's about showing intention and thought through your work whatever that work may be.

It does stand in sharp contrast to the more personal and direct efforts one could make to show their appreciation to say, their family.
It's indirect & sometimes it fucks up, but I think one of the best gifts parents can give their children is by having love & cares of their own, beyond their children. Being the object of affection & appreciation is not going to teach you core lessons about what appreciation & dedication really are; the child is too inside the system. They need other examples of what commitment & caring are, they need examples of people entailing themselves to meaningful purposeful things.
Lisa may agree