Vice and Virtue
When I was growing up, a major influence in my life was my maternal grandfather. He was a natural born teacher, but also very educated with a string of degrees after his name. I, along with assorted cousins spent summers in Grandma and Grandpa’s very comfortable house.
Dinner usually saw a grown up table with twelve to sixteen adults seated and a child’s table with ten to twelve of us younger folk. It was a happy home but also unusually mentally active. No one sat and watched TV (wasn’t allowed) besides it was black and white then, every youngster had to “report” what book they were reading or what experiment they were involved in. Since I discovered cooking really early, I came up with some unusual ideas like sweet potato ice cream, or figuring out whether bugs were worth eating. He never scoffed at any of our ideas, but when he sensed that one of us was not challenging our minds or were downright lazy, he would get red in the face and we would all wait for that explosive tone of voice to shoot across the room or the lawn, depending on where he found the culprit cousin of the moment.
Yes, Grandpa preached on the Seven Deadly Sins. But he had a particular aversion to laziness. He was convinced that if a person was lazy, the other six sins just became a part of that person’s world. (I’m over simplifying here) but as a grew up I kept seeing proof in my own life of how detrimental laziness is. And it is insidious. It can affect one’s personal hygiene, spread to one’s ability to do a job correctly and effectively, affect the ability to find the right friends, even rob one of the joy of life if not contained.
Recalling from my studies in Comparative Lit, I believe it was Thomas Aquinas who said acedia (latin for sloth) refers to the negative quality of perpetual mental uneasiness. The Greeks described sloth as neglect. Easy to see why Grandpa preached vigorously on conquering any lazy tendencies.
The virtue opposite sloth is diligence. Interestingly enough diligence is a word I love. When I watch Jess plan her work day and focus on all the areas she works on to make each website in our SureThing program stay on the first page of Google, it does me proud. I’m proud too of Crystal and her incredibly organized paper work. She juggles so many tasks with ease, seldom gets flustered, talks to vendors and clients daily and can be depended on to always spot potential problems especially with print projects. Way in the back of the main room is Reggie’s office. He is glued to his chair for most of the ten hours we spend here wrestling with code, he does not eat (says it is distracting), never makes idle conversation (my Grandpa would have loved him). I could go on and on.
The point is, as I explained to everyone who works here, do a good job and you have a place at DDA, but it would be better for all, if we can be like cream and rise to the top–the team is only as strong as its weakest link–and as we all know DDA does get rid of weak links. The only way we can stay competitive is with a truly diligent team.
Entry by: elizabeth