Improvement

It seems humans were designed to improve what was given to them. Give a human a block of wood and it will be carved into shape or figure. Give a human a patch of dirt and it will be made into a garden. It's something humans do very well. What we don't do is create, and what we don't aspire for is destruction. In the technical sense, everything a man does is an improvement, not a creation. At best, the improvement will be a manifestation of an idea, but the improvement itself will still only be a modification of provided tools. Painters paint on paper, with oils. We do not create from nothing. To an important degree, a builder is only as good as the tools being used. Great men do much with little. Weak men do nothing with much. There is no blame for the man who was given nothing and produced nothing.

A person can partially measure himself/herself not by what has been created, but what he/she has done with what he/she has been given. What's hard for me is to see how little I've done, while it seems I've been given so much. We wonder why suicide rates are higher in America than in some poverty stricken countries. I'm sure it partially has to do with Maslow's hierarchy of needs and failing to meet key aspects. I think another part of it is that they've been given so little, they aren't disappointed when they struggle to bring home food, they are too proud when they finally acquire food to worry about how easy it is for us. However, maybe Americans (I am particularly guilty of this) see how easy everything is for us to get, and when we see how little we've done with our opportunity it leads us to feel like failures. This is just a thought.