Wish to grow

Rudi my teacher once said "Norman go into your heart everyday and ask deeply to grow."

If you improve your skills, you have a greater chance to have a marvelous life.  I feel everyone should pick some skill that serves others and become a master at it.

The Japanese government, with the goal of preserving important intangible cultural assets, provides a special annual grant of 20,000 dollars (2 million yen) to Living National Treasures. 

Last year, I visited a ceramic artist and was especially attracted to a large plate with a painted drawing. It was a fine piece of art, but it had a price of around $2,500 and it was new.  I asked and was told that the artist was a natural treasure.

High skill is appreciated in Japan and people are willing to pay for it. I feel this is true in most aspects in life.  If you just continue to grow, you will improve your value and should have a marvelous life.

Germany has a mastery program where a young person instead of preparing to go to college can go to a technical school. Many young children in the past would actually go and work with a master of some trade.  You were given a broom to clean up and told to watch the master and "steal" his/her talent and make it yours.  Maybe it took four to six years, but you were expected to become a master at the end of your training.

Unfortunately, in America, you can go through 13 years of grammar school and graduate with no skill to make a living.  The lucky ones can go on to college, but a vast number go out into the workplace and get boring and repetitive jobs. We should be taught how to cook, how to design and make clothes, how to become a carpenter, electrician, plumber, tinsmith, computer programmer, etc.

Toyota recently also started a mastery program where they designate the high skilled people as "masters," someone that people can look up to, learn from and hopefully some day they will also become a master.

Canon has a program of developing people into "supermeisters." Instead of people working on an assembly line or conveyor belt they are now in cells.  I saw one young woman who was able to assemble an entire copier with over 1000 parts all by herself in around three hours at a 30% higher productivity and with a very high level of quality.  I love this for it shows that people can be developed way beyond what they normal do in today's manufacturing environment.