There’s something to be said for the old phrase “paying attention to detail,” but I sometimes wonder if it’s really used anymore.
Is it?
In some respects, I’ve had a reputation in the past for taking care of things quickly. I am, in fact, a terrible procrastinator. But it’s because I know that about myself that one of my biggest guiding principles in life is to “get it done now or you might not get it done at all.” I know from long experience how ridiculously easy it is to completely forget about something if I don’t take care of it right away. So I’d say I’m more “efficient” out of practicality than anything else.
There’s a thread of this in the Bible too. If you take care of the smaller things with a sense of importance, you can be counted upon to take care of the bigger. But it seems we’re in a world now where it’s the standard to neglect the small things. If it isn’t of critical importance, it’s not just that it can wait, it’s that it’s going to have to wait. “Cuz I’ve got a picnic to go to.”
I kind of get the impression sometimes that people are far more concerned with their own leisure than with getting a job done, and I think they’re missing out on something if they approach their work that way. I remember many times where I or the team I was on could walk out of the building after a grueling day (or just as often, night) with the deep satisfaction that we had done something and that it was important. People are missing out on that feeling because they’d rather take the easy way and either put it off or forget about it altogether.
And maybe that’s the direction we’re taking as a country. Once a nation reaches a certain level of prosperity, the new challenge is to find things to do with it. Here’s the divide between old and new – with so much more that is so much more available, people would rather just spend their efforts chasing the social media jackpot. “Look at me and my lovely photos in this beautiful place eating this wonderful food!” We’ve got to impress, and even I do it (and maybe that’s one of the reasons I think dropping social media was such a good idea). We just passed Halloween, and perhaps Halloween is a beautiful case in point. If there’s a “holiday” (that isn’t a holiday) that best embodies the American ideal, this is the one. A bunch of adults usurping a children’s’ day to basically act like children themselves.
But maybe we’ll get a bit of a wakeup call soon. I recently read an AP article titled Pentagon Rattled by Chinese Push on Multiple Fronts. I’ve warned before about China. I’ve speculated about what a nation flush with cash and a surplus of young men might start doing globally. And now it turns out, they might be hitting crisis mode economically. Anyone born before 1980 might remember what it was like living with a global boogeyman (the Soviet Union). It may seem like overhyped, goofy spy stuff looking back on it, but there may come a time (and fairly soon) when we’ll all get to feel that old feeling again.
But are we ready? I’m inclined to say no. I can look around and rattle off several obvious examples as to why today’s military is far less prepared for another adversary with global ambitions (I’m not talking “war-on-terror” stuff here at all). But the one I can hit at most right here and now is the forgetting of such a simple thing as “paying attention to detail.”