Taking Care of The Non-living

It hurts when I saw a poster being torn by someone. One time I told a friend about it. He thought I was joking or perhaps he thought I was naïve. For sure I was not joking. Perhaps I’m simply a little naïve, just little. I always feel that way. Not the naïve thing but the sympathy for non-living things.

I used to work as a Process Engineer at an apparel industry. Those days, I had the chance to see closely the process of making some of the famous clothing brand like The North Face, Reebok, Nike and Adidas. It was an exciting job. I’ve got to see the transformation from plain rolls of apparel to its final look inside sealed containers ready for display at the malls and department stores. I saw how much hardwork each worker put to make each piece look as it should. One tweak of a stitch and everything’s returned for rework. While we have a target quantity per day, the quality is still at its utmost priority. It was a rigorous process. Since then, I become very sympathetic with everything I wear. I would imagine the sweat and the sacrifice of each worker behind those clothing I wear.

Later on, I realized I have felt the same towards other things like books, posters, magazines, and others. It is an inevitable cycle, wherein everything starts from being orderly to being disorderly.  In Science, entropy is a thermodynamic property of both living and non-living things. For the living organisms such as humans, entropy is associated with death. Like a piece of paper. At the time it’s taken out of its container, it is very pure and white. Even by doing nothing on it or simply by letting it stand on a shelf, eventually through time, it would change its color from pure white to brownish white. Soon, it would decay. I find this process of nature somehow sad. There is nothing we could do to keep it from losing its original quality. Even by taking too much care for it, entropy still takes place. Taking it for granted and doing reckless things to it increase the process. Everything undergoes this process.

Aside from death, entropy is another thing certain in this world. We may not be able to stop it from happening but the only thing we could do is to delay it by taking care of everything that matters to us. For example, a photo, by taking care of it, we could preserve it and enjoy it even a little longer. 

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