Isn't that stone gorgeous? That is a spinel ("spi- NELL"), a fairly rare gemstone which doesn't get nearly enough play in jewelry, given its superior qualities (great hardness, fantastic dispersion (reflectivity/ sparkle), and range of colors. Until modern lab testing, Spinel was thought to be ruby, and indeed some of the Crown Jewels in the Tower of London were always believed to be rubies, but are really spinels.
We grade gemstones by the Four C's: Color, Cut, Clarity, and Carats.
But why stop at gemstones? What about wine? The color of a wine is one of the ways we most identify with it, whether it is a meek attempt at red (I'm thinking of Pinot noir, of which the French say, "Color in Pinot is like clothes on a woman--utterly unnecessary!") or a vivid, teeth-staining purple so rich in resveratrol that you could turn a nursing home into a kindergarten with it. Let's call the cut in a wine the style of it--as we could speak of "the cut of a person's character," we could talk of the cut of a wine. Is it big? Balanced? Complex? Aromatic? Clarity is an interesting wine topic. Some winemakers will filter and filter until they get a product that is so polished and sparkling that it might seem more like sculpted marble in the Musee d'Orsay than mere liquid. Others think that filtering strips out flavors, but science is seeming to suggest that filtering, even down to .45 microns (enough to prevent yeasts and bacteria from passing) doesn't, can't, strip out flavor compounds. Me? I'm fine if a tartaric acid crystal occasionally floats by. I wouldn't want my wine to look like a Hefeweizen, but if it's reasonably non-opaque, that's fine. Carats? In Wine? We could say it relates to the size of the bottle, surely.
And why stop at wines? I have survived 28 years, and counting, in modern corporate life. It seems to me that all we need are the Four C's:
1. Competence: A sense that we have enough skill, experience, and resources to accomplish reasonable goals set out for us. This requires managers and peers who serve as good mentors and encouragers and enablers. In the true Montessori spirit, we must all give, even better than we receive, in this regard.
2. Challenges: The right kind of problems to solve: Not too many (stressful), not too few (boring), not too easy (boring); not too hard (frustrating).
3. Congratulations: We need recognition for our achievements, and we need to freely give recognition to others as well. This process helps to create a peer-based reality, instead of everybody feeling like a low rung in a far-flung hierarchy.
4. Communication: We need to be told what's going on; without that, we feel excluded and we aren't able to contribute as well to the company's success as we might.
If employees don't get the Four C's, they will likely be demotivated. After all, as employees we are serving in the role formerly played by slaves or serfs. The life of a serf was nasty, brutish, and short. One way to break out of the "owe my soul to the company store" mentality is to avoid most forms of debt; limit the urge to be materialistic; save like crazy, especially when you're young; invest conservatively in diversified, low-cost investments; don't panic when others are; see yourself as a citizen of both your immediate community and also of the whole world (this whole national-identity thing is much over-rated); and work like hell to preserve your good health, so that you can enjoy what should be many years of happy pursuits in whatever fields turn you on.
Thus endeth the Four C's.
