Programmer Love

There are things that I do might do well. Things like cooking or organizing or speaking or even writing. Other people do useful things, like engineering and computer programming. They do cool stuff like create shortcuts and make your mouse look like a light saber. You know, useful stuff.

I would not classify my job as exciting exactly. I enter information, do calculations and sit in meetings much like the rest of the world. I try my best to pay attention to things going on around me despite my low-focus personality. One day I had an experience that reminded me that life is greatly about our point of view. I should remember the things that Obi Wan teaches but I remind you of my low-focus problem. I was training on a new computer program in a meeting when I remembered. I remembered the cancel button. Let me first say that having your own personal company computer programmer that will do anything that you ask, like teach your computer to make toast and put you into the Matrix with a shortcut key, is pretty badass. But the best invention ever is the cancel button.

The first thing that happens when you press the wrong button at work, after you swear, is the box that says “are you sure you want to do this stupid thing that you just did?” Yes or No? Well crap. What if I say yes and it blows up the building? Or say no and I disappear forever? The trusty solution is a cancel button that comes from the simplest place of all. Love.

When our programmer was working on a project his wife told him that one of her biggest frustrations is not fear, it is that there is no other choice, yes or no is it. And we just went through what the options are there. His solution? Cancel. Yep, you can just cancel the mistake. Cancel your screw up. Cancel all the pain that you may have caused yourself in life with one simple button. And all of this from the minds of the people around him as they try and find more ways to work harder, longer and make more money. His point of view? Probably that if it works for him and makes his wife happy that it may just do that same for the world. How do programmers say I Love You? They just hit Cancel.