Without a system in place what do you do? You stroll out of your farmhouse door, walk down to the orchard and pick a luscious, ripe, red apple right off the tree. That was easy. And you got some exercise and fresh air too.
What if you don’t live on a farm. Don’t worry there’s a small system already in place to help you. Pay the local grocer a visit. He gets his apples delivered in baskets from the orchard. They’re not quite as fresh, and they’re not the best of the bunch (they got sold off somewhere else), but they’re good enough to keep you reasonably satisfied.
What’s a local grocer? The ‘convenience economy’ killed them off years ago. What do you do? No problem. There’s a bloody great big system encroaching on everybody’s daily lives, apparently making everything more convenient. It’s called the supermarket chain. They pick their red apples from the tree when they’re still green and then locate them in atmospherically controlled storage. Here the apples ripen, except the ripening process just isn’t the same as ripening on tree. Once the apples are red they’re shipped by air, land or sea, spending days weeks in boxes subjected to varying temperatures. What you see on the supermarket shelf is labelled a fresh apple but the texture and flavor bears little resemblance to that luscious, ripe, red apple picked right off the tree.
So what’s with the apple? It’s fresh. It’s the two words “fresh apple” are being used to label what are actually two very different things, causing people to think they are precisely the same thing.
Labels are misleading. They’re a great source of confusion. Look at the word ‘agile’ - I’ve got no idea what it means anymore, so I try not to use it.
Recommend reading from John Gall:
