Value of People

Recently I have been thinking a lot about the value of people.  Some events have occurred to make me do so.

1. My wife and I have been working on corporate values as an exercise in preparing a Business Plan for a new idea we have.
2. I had a couple boys confess to a bit of vandalism on my car.
3. My daughter got into her first accident while learning to drive, prior to getting her license.

These events have brought me to realize that I value people more than "stuff".  I guess I have known that for a long time but two of these events involved damaging my stuff.  I find that I am not that worried about he cars, my concern is about the people. 

I have made my money for a long time by working with computers.  That is the simple way to say it but in reality I don't enjoy computer hardware as much as the stuff we can do with them.  I really enjoy computer networks.  It is when people come together to collaborate that I get excited about computers.  I think of the computers as a hammer in the hand of a carpenter or a paint brush in the hand of an artist.  The computer is a tool for humans to do great things. I enjoy the computer working for people.  I don't like it when a computer is not functioning for somebody.  People and the time that people invest are much more important than the computer equipment.

People are intelligent and amazingly creative.  Many people unfortunately have not put themselves in the right "place" to make the most of their talents.  They may also wrongly assume that being gifted is enough.  Some people seem to be noted as more exceptional than others and usually it is because they have taken a gift they have and worked hard to support it.  At the same time they discovered their weakness and find a way to avoid it.  They get support for their weakness or find a partner that can eliminate the weakness because it happens to be their gift or talent.