What's The Attraction?

This is the last time I'll be sitting behind my current company laptop writing my Friday morning blog as I am setting out on a new adventure and what expectations we have! More on that in future blogs and yes I do intend to continue blogging.

This week, I attended an Engineer In Training Conference and really admire the skills that these young people are already demonstrating. One presenter gave us an overview of a new mall being built in Nanyuki in Kenya and the design and construction of the building services he was involved with. A line of text in his presentation referred to the escalators that were being installed and resonated something in me. To most of us, we use escalators every time we go to the local mall or shopping centre. A pretty normal occurrence. In Kenya, the escalators being installed would be the first escalators in the country, so in the presenter's words, "would be an attraction in themselves". That sparked a spiral of thoughts of how differently we perceive and value things. If we visited that mall in Kenya, we probably wouldn't have even noticed the significance of the escalators, as they are such common-place items in our lives that we take for granted. Imagine those visitors, riding on them for the first time. How different would their experience be compared to ours? Imagine the excitement, the trepidation, the wonderment of how they work! You and I would just step onto it and think silently, "I hope the hand railing is clean".
To them, the novelty and uniqueness, is the attraction. To us the converse makes the escalators mundane.

What makes something attractive for you? I am not asking about the obvious physical attractiveness of someone. Rather, do you like the new and cutting-edge technology or do you prefer the classics? Are you drawn into the refined cultural activities or are you a bush loving survivor? My adventure is taking me to a place that has been wooing me for many years and it certainly has the natural aspects that are an attraction to me as opposed to any 'hoity-toity' cultural affairs. My take is that we all perceive beauty and are attracted in different manners. There may be some overlap and that's where the common interests lead to friendships, partnerships and marriage. Sharing those attractions is an essential part of forming a bond with someone else. Having a common passion makes it easy to relate to another individual. As a group of runner's we can talk about the pro's and con's of different socks for over an hour. I would never expect everyone to get excited over such things but we all have our specific "sock-conversations". Once again, we need to respect those differences and maybe even try to engage in something outside of our normal attraction-sphere. You may surprise yourself and discover a new passion, or at least learn something new about running socks...