On being moved to appreciate trivialities


Usually quotes come to mind as I write some thoughts but when I started to write this post after much laziness preventing any writing I could not much recall any that fitted the exact thoughts in my minds which triggered me to post this until I found this.

“To praise the sun is to praise your own eyes.” - Jalal ad-Din Rumi


And so you could say for anyone who can really praise anything while not directly involved with it.
While human craving for appreciation is so well known what we do not realize is how few can truly appreciate.
I do not mean the appreciation mailers really I blogged on but more like enjoying something irrelevant really enough to appreciate - not because it is a success or because everyone loves it -But really be able to be touched by something small thats well ignored in general.
May be I am confusing it with many things I think in this respect so lets go to the background that framed the thought.

Someone from our team was leaving - well to build the character first
- the chap can be exasperating in his questioning which is where we started off when he came new
- argumentative when he knows something and absolutely I care a damn about authorities.
He kind of had a reputation for being a confuser - in which I played a good part due to the way he confused me too - but more
esp as somehow his communication style made life worse for him.
But then with time I really could see the passion with which he worked on what he liked even when no one cared and I seriously appreciate that.
One of the downsides of having a policy at work where its like do what you want , how you want as long as what we want is working is no one out there differentiates between how well optimally or precisely someone got it to work.
No one appreciates the finer backend stuff .
So well time went on - we had new manager , new leads and now this guy was leaving and so he arranged a knowledge transfer of his work. There were just two of us me and a new senior lead who was now picking up most of the work writing code and he walked us through - at the end the senior chap just said to me - "he has written it so well"
Something I always knew and saw but there was nothing I could say as in the end its all about what is accepted as working
- in which we had less success
This new senior guy is also a very hard working chap and has made a success out of things so well that stands out. What no one sees is - he writes things to work for that moment - his success is due to his heroic efforts - which in future would be hard to handle by others - unlike someone who wrote it more well neat with a thought for ease and longevity.

But I thought at least this guy had the eye to see the good work - something the so called managers pre-occupied with making ppts dont. And so that incident and another below brought me this whole thought of how
- can we appreciate and - what we appreciate tells so much about us.

My father is one of those persons about whom one of the advertisements jokes - "tab tho un dinon street light ke paas kaafi bheed rahi hogi" (it must've been really busy with so many people under the street light)- Yeah he too says I studied there .

Nevertheless he was viewing the new 5 star add where two guys sat on a wooden horse thing and well he said "what crap is this . They pay lakhs for this nonsense" . Well I thought - Ok he's off on his usual rant - but then he remembered a ad and appreciated it - a rarity and that would tell so much about him - its not a enjoyable or fun ad but he appreciated it.
"He said that add where a kid takes a wire and makes something like tongs for his mother - how nice that concept was" - It was for Havell's fire proof cables
The fact is my father is one of those people who loves making things out of such crap which exasperates us no end as this pretty much means nothing in the house can be thrown out - everything could be useful in some way !! . Yup oyr house is full of old wires being used for clothesline - broken shoe heels can be fashioned into door stoppers and what not :(
And so I realised that was why that ad touched him and he liked it .
Just as someone who loves to code appreciates a good code.

Indeed to praise the sun is praising your own eyes - your own love for the light & warmth it bestows