The appeal of the timeless

Ancient Roman sewers were carved with enormous precision and beauty.

Those who want you to serve them will make you focus your work on short-term value — for example, SEO, sales, etc. It's difficult to extract meaning from a process that is ephemeral. Most of the work we end up doing ends up being meaningless — but it is doubly so when it is only serving someone else's short-term ambitions to make money.

Maybe making money short-term is a good goal if you want to gain a lot of money to focus your time on what you want? But it's hard to say that doing so while forcing others to focus on your short-term benefit would be fulfilling. Hardly so — that such a short-term effort without a long-term goal would end up producing an overall feeling of well-being for something that is ultimately inconsequential and ephemeral.

Work that is timeless stands the test of time because it is worthwhile. Maybe many creators are not appreciated in their lifetime — for example, Vincent Van Gogh.

But also, our work should be measured by our own barometers of quality. We should strive to be objective about how good our work is, if only to improve it. It would be better to ignore the external factors except insofar as it's necessary for the achivement of the goals of the work.

Nowadays, we work on ephemeralities and trivialities instead of building permanent and beautiful things.