The other day my son wore his winter uniform to school and it included a blazer that he was particularly excited about wearing. After the first wear, he brought home two buttons that had come off from it and gave them to me for stitching. When I was fixing them, I saw that all the buttons had been stitched on with minimal thread and were bound to come off sooner or later. I have come to realise that it’s a given for school blazers to have buttons stitched on carelessly no matter which brand you buy.
To me this is one of the many fine details that are missing in our daily lives because we and others spend too much time focusing on results and feel like there is very little impact we ourselves can put in to improving life experience through our work and routine.
What I mean is that when bakers do not handle food wearing gloves, when public offices do not bother about facilitating customers with simple transactions and when shopkeepers dump their shop’s garbage into the common sewerage drain it reflects that they do not consider the fine details worth their while. The trouble is that we most probably do not care about these details because they don’t get us any money and also probably because we do not understand our role in making life better for ourselves and those around us. For a person stitching the blazer buttons, it’s more important to turn in as many blazers as possible because each piece completed brings money. They don’t understand the broader perspective of their work and their own role in keeping children warm through winters and therefore contributing to them being healthy.
Unfortunately, I do not have any research to say that filling these fine details will make us prosperous people. And that is the biggest argument businesses make when they are told to be conscientious about their responsibilities (no matter how petty they seem). The bigger dilemma is that this apathy is not just restricted to the businesses. Even consumers (we the people) care little about the quality of our transactions.
For instance, one day at a bakery I saw a cockroach merrily partaking off the premium dessert line and reported it to the staff. The pastry tray was duly removed however it was not trashed. When I spoke about how the business might fail if it didn’t pay attention to this aspect… I was intrigued by the responses of common customers who said the business will not really care about it since the common people will continue to throng it as the product prices are relatively cheaper compared to other bakeries!
I wonder that even though the universal traditions of wisdom and faith emphasize upon being kind to others … we do very little to this effect. Come to think of it, our faith talks of the importance of even little deeds like removing obstructions from walkways so people and animals do not get harmed and we seem to be a million years away from thinking how to benefit others. For us Pakistanis, we have ignored the fine details for so long that we are now lodged in a huge space of fine and large details to be filled!
Perhaps in our dogged pursuit of outcomes we have managed to put thick veils of self interest in the connection between kindness and prosperity, between refining processes and seeing meaning in our work and roles. But to me these fine details are like random acts of kindness. They cannot be faked… they come from the kind of intent and attention we engage the world with. These random acts of kindness bring more meaning to others and make the life experience of others gracious. And I firmly believe that we reap as we sow. Therefore when I put kindness into the world around me, the kindness will be reciprocated to me somehow.
I could harp on and on about what needs to be done by others, but that will not achieve any end. For those of us, who feel wronged and at the receiving end of these missing details, we could introspect on the gaps we ourselves can fill through our work and in our life roles. We could all ask ourselves if we are standing in proper queues wherever it’s required of us? Are we abiding the traffic rules? Do we leave puddles in washrooms at transit lounges or at the office? Do we throw garbage on the road randomly? Do we protest or boycott adulteration and unhygienic products?
Are we playing the connection between refined processes and satisfied customers? Are we doing anything to remove the veils of self interest that have covered the link between kindness and our prosperity as a species?
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One response to “The Fine Details”
Dear Afia,
Your concern is of course paramount in the minds of all of us who are also aghast at the ‘consumerisation’ of all that was once durable!
It is my belief that this phenomenon (or is it a pandemic disease?) cannot be solved without redefining our economic measurement systems and indicators.
The use of income measures to track economic activity together with the use of the transactional instrument, that is money, as the unit of measure for both the value of wealth acquired and for the net value of the transactions by which we record economic activity has created a confusion in the minds of everyone. This confusion is exploited by those for whom wealth is only a measure of the stores of value which are surplus to their actual day-to-day living and and which are surplus to their foreseable daily needs for decades ahead.
Properly defined the wealth which ordinary people aspire to, uninfluenced by the pressures to consume or be fashionable, is simply a measure of those possessions and goods which provide assurance that they may reasonably expect to be able to continue their life and living into the foreseeable future protected to an acceptable degree against unforeen and unforeseeable contingencies. All assets beyond this envelope are ‘status goods’ and tools by which power can be exercised over our fellow humans.
The goods in this envelope of Real Wealth are the accoutrements of life and need only to be fit for purpose, durable, low maintenance and long-lived to be assessed as wealth. Their real value needs to be expressed by a unit of measure that reflects these characteristics…. a difficult but necessary task if one is serious about human developmen.
The characteristics of Real Goods are anethema to our current ideas of economic growth and development and are incompatible with the popular myths underlying our systems of social status, power and governance.
It is an unconscious recognition of the dilemmas posed by moving from the dysfunctional present to a functional future, one in which our species can survive and grow, that is at the root of the desperation, and seemingly mindless violence of both rebellious and reactionary factions across the globe. They all feel overwhelmed and hopeless but convinced of the need for change or for none. They will pursue their private panacea too the death. Why? Because they feel hopeless, powerless or in danger of losing any they may have.
Hope is the key. That can only be generated by belief in a credible path forward to a desirable new way of approaching life and the living of it. It is that path and the means of transiting to it which must be defined. It was what I, and us all, have begun. A conscious realisation of this and coming together is needed. It will take many hundreds over many years to achieve it. It is necessary.