“Just gonna finish one more level. I’ll catch up to you in a bit.”

 

I was recently working on a design to include in a proposal for an interesting project. I wasn’t being paid and there was a good chance that, even if the design was brilliant, there would be another company willing to do the job for next to nothing. Nevertheless, I was enjoying the work. I had an idea in my head and I just needed to see it materialize.

It was past my bedtime and it got me wondering about slaves in ancient Egypt.

When you picture the construction of the pyramids, it usually involves massive hordes of sunken-chested slaves hauling giant stones on their backs while some guy in a fancy headdress smacks them with a whip or sics a tiger on them if they start to slack off. It looks pretty miserable.

But maybe the Egyptians actually enjoyed piling all those rocks on top of each other. They had to get a certain satisfaction as they saw that thing get taller and taller every day. Maybe they kept toiling away just to be part of something that big. Maybe they just wanted to build something really cool that would be around long after they died.

In creative endeavors, you often find people working hard for next to nothing. Building web pages, for instance, is kind of a pain, (especially true in the early days) but look at what’s been built in just over a decade. There are billions of web pages that were created by people who just wanted to put something out there for the world to see. Building things is a natural impulse that makes us feel good.