Radical acceptance of self

[SteveinMN]

I don't think most people can craft a workplace for themselves that enables them to "make love visible." Economic concerns, and all...
Making love visible seems achievable on a personal level--taking care of a loved one, showing concern for strangers, that kind of thing.
Kudos to anyone who can pull that off while sorting widgets or stocking shelves.

Maybe it was a quirk of my personality or maybe just the kinds of jobs I wandered into, but I've long believed there is a certain -- well, almost a nobility -- to making infrastructure supportive but invisible.

I believe there are two aspects to that. One is design, which creates an object or experience that just works. It's one reason I've "paid the Apple tax" in buying computers and smartphones over the years. It's why I love my ASKO dishwasher, which is simple to use, built like a tank, and swallows everything that should be washed in a dishwasher and cleans and dries it using less water than I would washing by hand. I had to dig deeper into the budget to buy it. But it's been worth every penny to me.

The other aspect is process. The people at your favorite store who anticipate your purchase by making sure there's a variety of sizes/colors on the shelf -- or even that the shelf is stocked before it's absolutly empty, by an employee who does not block the entire aisle with their cart -- that's process. For many years I worked in computer operations, "keeping the training running". There was a lot of work done analyzing traffic to help ensure that, when a bunch of users were added to a system, it didn't bog down into unusability. Or to make sure that Wi-Fi throughout the building was fast enough and generally available, not spotty or sporadic.

People tend not to notice when things work -- but they surely notice when they don't. That does not typically happen by accident. There are entire fields of work involved in making sure things work. Maybe calling it "love" is extreme. But people who don't like people generally don't create things that just work. Now, the environment in which that happens? That's a different deal.

[catherine]

then I hate love.

I'm really sorry that your work has made you feel that way, ANM. I have made myself ennoble (as Steve put it) my own work to make the most of it, and to make the most of my life energy. I feel that if I am giving something back to society, that's love in action. As I alluded to earlier, a lot depends on management as to whether or not you are made to feel that you are valuable as a contributor or just a replaceable cog in the wheel. The latter is far, far too common.

If we lived in simpler times, when our world centered around a town green, and we'd visit Mr. Smith the Butcher, for our meat, and Mrs. Jones, the Tailoress, for our clothes, and Mr. Greene, the owner of our General Store for our hardware, we would have a sense of interdependence, which can be defined as "love" in a way. But that really doesn't exist anymore.

[Zoe Girl]

Thank you Catherine and tybee, makes me feel good that i said something well. Now i just need to needlepoint it