I was going to write a review of this Alain de Botton book whose theme is why and when work is meaningful (answer: when it creates delight or reduces suffering in others), but obviously somebody else had made a better job of it.
Somehow I found this ode to how important and significant jobs which we wouldn’t otherwise notice such as power transmission engineering or fishing and food logistics strangely uplifting for a simple reason: I can fully identify with the drive to create delight in others through the results of my efforts.
We end up coming back to the same thing: maybe empathy is what makes us human?
It was surprising for everybody here in Finland to experience last summer. Winter was very cold and snowy for Finnish standards and summer came in strong and lasted the mandatory 3 months. We reached temperatures of 35°C in parts of the country and even in Helsinki it was above 30°C for most of July. Now the rains have started and the summer seems but a memory, so this post is a homage to the warmest, most tropical season in recorded Finnish history.
Get a proper beer mug and fill the rim with salt. Squeeze the juice out of the lemons, add a couple of drops of the sauces in the list and finally the beer.
