The slow collapse of things made with love
I held something that was clearly made to last. It was heavier than expected. Not in a flashy way, just solid. The kind of object that does not ask for attention, but earns it once you give it a moment.
I remember thinking that it would probably outlive me, and that whoever made it must have cared, even if I would never know their name.
That feeling has become rarer.
Many things now are designed to pass, not to endure. They arrive already halfway toward replacement. You can see it in furniture, in food, in writing, in software, in movies that feel assembled rather than made.
Craftsmanship depends on a strange and unfashionable motivation. You have to care about the thing itself. Not how it performs in the market. Not how it looks in a report. You have to care about whether it is good on its own terms.
That kind of care takes time, and attention, and judgment. It does not move quickly, and it does not always align with quarterly goals. So it gets treated as a luxury, or worse, as inefficiency.
In systems organized around external rewards, craftsmanship becomes irrational. Why linger over details no one measures. Why deepen a practice when the return is uncertain.
People learn to optimize for visibility instead of substance, for output instead of mastery. The work still happens, but it is thinner. The satisfaction drains out of it. Even the people doing it can feel the difference, though they may not be able to name it.
There is a quiet contradiction here.
We praise excellence, but we build structures that make it difficult to pursue. We celebrate makers, but we promote managers. We want things to feel thoughtful and alive, but we punish anyone who takes the time to make them that way. The result is a slow fading. Fewer moments of delight. Fewer objects or stories that invite attachment.
When craftsmanship disappears, it does not announce its exit.
Life continues. Things function. But something intimate goes missing. The sense that another human paid attention on your behalf. That someone cared enough to do the thing well, even if no one was watching. Once you notice that absence, it becomes hard to ignore. And once you remember what it feels like to encounter real care in a made thing, everything else starts to feel just a little bit unfinished.