*No actual sausages were harmed in the writing of this blog post.
I have become very interested lately in how things are made, for a variety of reasons:
1. Understanding. I think there is a lot in this world that people mystify that needs to be understood; otherwise, it's all smoke and mirrors and The Man behind the curtain. Things turned out better for Dorothy once she pulled back that curtain, don't you think?
2. Learning. How can you do something if you don't know how to do it? You learn. "I'd love to be able to [fill in the blank]." Well, if someone here on planet Earth has figured out how to do it in the past, then it's probably learnable. If it hasn't been done, maybe you can piece together things that have already been done to make that New Thing.
3. Economizing. As with haiku and minimalist design (I didn't harm any of them in the making of this blog post, either), there's something to be said for maximizing the little things. Two examples: I find that I want to know how pages get printed in order to try to write to accommodate that and not waste paper; I find that I want to find alternative uses for things I already have in order not to waste resources.
4. Curiosity. I believe in curiosity for the sake of curiosity. I know bad things happened to Pandora and the Cat, but curiosity is a way of approaching life in a vital way. If you know it all, have seen it all, life becomes ennui-laden and frankly dull as dishwater. Why settle for that? If you know it all, have seen it all, that's you limiting yourself because there is always more out there.
So back to my awful sausage analogy: if you learn how the sausages are made, you can decide whether or not that is something you actually want to eat with all available information; if you learn how the sausages are made, you can make your own and not have to rely on someone else to do it for you; if you learn how the sausages are made, you will understand how to waste nothing and use everything; and
If you learn how the sausages are made, you'll be sure to be a hit at cocktail parties when you satisfy the curiosity of your fellow cocktail party-goers who didn't even know they were curious about where all those cocktail weenies come from.