Once upon a time some friends got together and decided that they wanted to make furniture. One group would make tables. Others would make bookcases. Some would work alone and make chairs or stools. But they all worked together, helping each other out as they went along. If the people making tables needed some chairs to make a set complete, then the chair makers would make some chairs and help them out, and vice versa. Before long they made the best furniture anyone had ever seen. It was sturdier, prettier, and more comfortable than any furniture that had ever been built before. They didn’t get much money for their furniture, but they were o.k. with that, because making furniture was what they loved to do and it was what they were good at doing.
But for some reason, nobody really bought the furniture. People would look at it and try it out, and then go back to sitting in uncomfortable chairs and using lopsided tables. The furniture makers saw this and thought “well surely if we just keep making the best furniture around and working together, our furniture will catch on.” But no. For some reason, people preferred the poorly made stuff to the well made stuff. There would be spurts of time when they couldn’t make enough furniture to keep all of their customers happy. But more often than that, the furniture sat unused.
After a while the furniture makers got sick of making all of this furniture that was never appreciated. They began to argue and bicker about whose fault it was that nobody was buying their tables and chairs and bookcases. Some decided that maybe they should have never chosen to be a chair maker or a desk maker. They quit their craft and went to work wherever they could find it. Others decided to go and work in a factory where they assembled uncomfortable and crooked furniture. Some thought that maybe if they built houses instead of furniture they could make a name for them self.
Meanwhile more and more people used the terrible furniture that everyone else was buying. And the skills of the ones who did such amazing work went unnoticed and unappreciated, until after a while it was no more.
It’s getting harder and harder to find a comfortable chair these days.
