Passion

Passion is what drives me to write these chronicles every week. To write them because I feel that it is something that I really have to do - a journey, if you like - but also because when all this endeavour started I made a compromise that I feel is an unyielding one. I also truly believe that by writing these chronicles I can help others like you and me, people dedicated to build strong interpersonal relationships.

This same passion is also what drives my personal life, and the love and adoration of my greatest achievement, my wonderful daughter, and the love of my life, my beautiful wife. Last but not least our dogs and of course our home. When you achieve balance in your life through a successful management of both personal and professional environments, that’s when you feel passion for what you do and for everything that surrounds you.

On a professional level, my two passions are mechanics and welding. This derives from the nature of my academic background in mechanical engineering. My love for welding comes from the marvel that I still today fell about the process of joining together metal parts by heating the surfaces to the point of melting with a blowpipe, electric arc, or other means, and uniting them by pressing, hammering, etc, and getting an object, a part or a structure… it’s magical. This may feel a little bit contradictory compared to a “pure” mechanical connection made possible by the use of a nut and bolt. There is - obviously - room for both. It’s matter of applying best practices according to whatever final result is needed or desired. Both processes can also be complemented. Just think about a metal part that is worn out due to constant movement. Such part can be repaired by fill in, and afterwards mechanised and finished to keep doing the same job that it was previously doing.

But mechanics is and always will be my passion. Mechanics is around us in more ways that we can imagine. The simple movement off our fingers, hands and our arms just to write these words is a mechanical process. Even if what drives the movement of our hand has to start with an electrical impulse from our brain, there is mechanics behind it. Mechanics is all around us on a daily basis, when we have to connect different parts that are strange to each other and by connecting them, we make them “familiar”, in a way. The way we connect those parts is mechanics, like gears that we connect to each other in order to transfer rotational movement until we end up with a result that we call a machine.

Mechanics is with us all the time, and whenever there is movement, not just because mechanics are the driver, but because it is what explains and make us understand why that movement is possible, mechanics end up influencing all the parts around that movement. This reminds me of one of my childhood memories. Quite often I would get a toy for my birthday or for Christmas. I remember that the first thing that I would do was to find out how that toy was made, what it was capable of and what were the parts that made its movements possible. And the best thing of all, to brake it apart and find out how it works. Why it would make a specific movement. This is the main concept of mechanics.

Now on a more down to earth approach, the way we connect with a customer, a supplier, our manager or our colleagues, has more mechanics than we can imagine. Sometimes there’s a perfect fit between the different parts that makes a perfect connection, hence seamless mechanics, that need very little adjustment for a long period of time.

On the other hand we may not have a perfect fit and that connection may need more work and adjustments that will result in a more desirable outcome. Sometimes that connection will require several alterations along the way or during the entirety of its life.

The approach I had in my childhood was what drove me into studying mechanical engineering. To be passioned about machinery and see mechanics everywhere, but in fact I think it was much more simple than that, it was simply curiosity what in fact drove my mind. We should always keep our curiosity high, not just because we need to feed ourselves with knowledge! We all have a limit in terms of capacity, our cache capacity is limited, and it cannot be increased according to our needs, so I prefer to better understand the mechanics behind it! My curiosity is mostly directed to understand how things work, how I can use them and how I can pass that knowledge to others. In a more simple way, mechanics is a way of connecting the dots. And trust me that if we know the mechanics, every time we face a problem we will have a better perspective about what causes it and what we have to do in order to solve it.

Closing edition note:

Once I have sent the draft of this edition to Bruno M. , I suspected that would be a challenge for him, mechanics is not his strenght. But at end he have made good use of the mechanics present on the draft. Curiosity, understanding, how and what to end at an important contribution to this edition. Many thanks!

Edition Bruno M.

Photo by Mike Hindle on Unsplash