Permanence

I left the company where I have worked for almost 10 years last week. It feels surreal, especially as it coincided with seeing the exterior of the house without scaffolding for the first time. My daughters exhaled ‘wow’, as we drove past, captured it all.

It made me think about the permanence of what we create in life. I guess children are pretty permanent (ha!), but I’m thinking specifically about the things we make with our hands and minds.

At work, apart from my beloved excel spreadsheets and powerpoint presentations, I didn’t build tangible ‘Things’. Most of my work is focused on changing Processes and culture which depend heavily on human behaviour, which change as the humans and the context they exist in change.

Seeing the house without it’s wrapping hit me with the reality that there now stands something that didn’t exist six months ago. I spoke about this with a friend who is renovating his home. He described to me how cool it is that in decades to come what they are creating now will still exist, in some form. Yup. Long after we’re gone, people will drive past and notice the odd building at the end of the road. Others will move through spaces we have spent over a year obsessing over.

It’s quite a gift to see something you’ve been playing around with in your head and on paper for months, manifest itself in a way that you can see touch it as it takes form, unlike my work, where a lot of the value takes time (so much time!) to show itself. It fills me with pride. Just as the last ten years of my job does. Because, while many of the things I made there will change and will not be permenant, the memories, experiences and friendships I have made are built to last.

Cheers to that!