There are artists in every line of business, usually doing a wonderful job and loving it. I was thinking about this earlier today, when I witnessed something that was quite remarkable.
An enlightening experience
A rear light bulb in my wife’s car had blown, so I went to a local car parts shop to get a replacement. I looked on the shelves and there was a dizzying array of choices, rows and rows of bulbs which were slightly different from each other.
The shop manager, seeing I was clearly puzzled with so many choices, asked if he could help. He was standing about 20 feet away. He looked at the bulb in my hand and immediately walked straight to a shelf, picked up a bulb and handed it to me.
‘You need this’, he said.
‘Thanks’, I replied.
Then it struck me…
It was only as I was paying for the bulb, that I realised what had just happened. He’d spotted and correctly identified the bulb I needed, from a massive array of alternatives, from around 20 feet away, with no help from me whatsoever. He checked the package on closer inspection of the bulb I brought in, and confirmed he’d given me the right replacement.
‘How did you do that?’, I asked.
He replied, ‘I have been handling car parts for 25 years. I know all their subtle differences from pretty-much any angle. Even with such a small light bulb and from a bit of a distance, I knew exactly what you were looking for. It takes years of practice.”
I think it’s wrong to assume that there is no art or craft, in what most people consider to be non artistic jobs. There is. No, not everyone in every profession performs like an artist. We all meet people who are clearly in the wrong job. We all encounter people who look bored with their work.
However, there are some quite amazing people out there, in every profession, who make a craft of what they do. We just need to be open-minded enough, to see them.