Can’t think of the right title for this so an OP is needed. Hope a mouseover gets you to look inside.
Do you ever consider that with all the dozens to hundreds of ice cream flavors available these days, why it’s still the case that if you go into a random ice cream shop or to a random ice cream case in the store, you’re always going to see Vanilla, Chocolate and Strawberry, even if that’s all they carry?
And with all the flavorings and spices and condiments there are, why salt and pepper and maybe sugar and ketchup are all you’ll find out on the typical restaurant table when you sit down.
And of all the colors stuff can come in, from cars to shirts to wallets and mailboxes, you’re going to have white and black among the options in all but the extreme cases.
What’s some other stuff like this?
Stuff you think about while you’re watching the grass grow or the paint dry or the water boil…
I think about how many people had to work so I could watch the gras grow or the water boil or the paint dry. Someone had to design and create all the required items and get them to the warehouse so they could get to the store that could sell them to me. Someone had to design the store, my house, my town, my clothes, etc. Every day you encounter the work of over a million people, probably before lunch.
So well said, Annie-Xmas, and it reminds me of something that should have been in the OP.
If you were left to your own devices in a world where everybody else was gone, dead or hauled away by aliens or underground hiding from the aliens, and something you were used to using on a regular basis quit working, could you fix it enough to be using it some more? TV, washing machine, toaster, lawn mower (now just why you’d be wanting to use it is another issue), computer, water faucet, even the simple things we take for granted?
Things are so highly specialized that even people who work in factories where some of this stuff is assembled probably wouldn’t have any idea how the whole thing works.
Our technology is a marvel and a curse to those who have no clue how it works.
There are times when things seem so critical or urgent or otherwise momentous that it takes a little effort to be able to get into a frame of mind that I often do. And that is to visualize myself as being separate from the Human Race long enough to pass judgment on the silliness involved, as if I weren’t a real part of it all. There are just so many evil and stupid and senseless things that human beings can do, for no more reason than that they are human, that makes me want to separate myself from them and go away to where they haven’t messed things up.
Then I come back to Reality and see my own thoughts and actions as being just as silly and stupid, and I can be a little easier on myself for it. Isn’t it hard to be a happy human being? Sometimes you just have to be happy in spite of it all.