On a recent episode of The Great Simplification, Josh Farley made a comment that not even Einstein – one of the smartest people who has ever lived – not even he could make a complete cheese sandwich from start to finish.
The point was that it almost immediately becomes about the supply chain. OK, if I have the bread, butter and cheese [and probably a plate and knife], then I can put the ingredients together. But I am also depending on my fridge, and before that – the shops and staff where I bought the ingredients. Before that – the delivery trucks and drivers. Before that – the farms and workers growing the crops and taking care of the cows. And so on and so on, right back to the mining of the basic materials. I’m depending on an awful lot of people and the skills they have, and a huge amount of resources for my simple cheese sandwich.
And at the foundation, holding it all together, is the energy required to do all of those things. [Including write and share, then read and react to this post – the supply chain never really ‘ends’, and it always needs energy].
Think about it too hard, and it quickly gets overwhelming.
We live in an astonishingly complex and connected world. All of us depend on a vast number of relationships, and there’s obviously no way we can understand [or even think about] all of them.
The interdependence is worth remembering though … at work or at play, with family or colleagues … wherever we are, and whatever we are doing, none of us get through this on our own.
