An Esteem Engine

 

One day, about the time of the evening meal, a conversation began between two of the citizens who reside in the House of Waldron.

“Dad,” said one, whose name was Elliot.  “I wish you were an inventor.  It would be so cool to have a dad who had invented something.”

"Well," said the other particpant in this conversation, who just happened to be Elliot's father.  "I did invent one thing, but it never caught on."

"What was that?"  The young lad inquired.

"Basically, you heat up a marshmallow and put it between to Oreo cookies.  I called it the "S'Moreo, but it never caught fire the way the light bulb did.  I'm guessing it's just because everyone is so focused on low carb diets these days.  If your father had but lived fifty years ago, he would have been famous."

"That isn't really the sort of invention I was thinking of.  I wish you had invented something interesting, like the Internet or something like that," Elliot said.

“I guess Al Gore did that already.  Anyway, I think being an inventor is overrated,” I told him.  “A lot of the people who claimed to invent things were just full of Hot Air.”

“Like what inventors were full of hot air?”  Elliot queried.  I could discern plainly that he was not convinced that his life would not have been remarkably better if his father had been more Edisonian.

“Well,” I said.  “People think Leonardo da Vinci was some kind of inventor – he sketched all sorts of things like flying machines and army tanks in his notebooks, but most of them weren’t workable the way he sketched them.  A man named Stanley Meyer claimed to have made a water powered car, but he never gave any convincing demonstrations of it.”

“A water powered car would be really cool,” Elliot said.

“Sure it would, if it worked.  We would save a lot of money on gas, that’s for sure, but the people who loaned him money to make it didn't seem very pleased,” I said.  “Even Nikola Tesla, who was a pretty famous inventor, claimed to have invented a Death Ray that could shoot down planes from 250 miles a way.  No one ever saw it in action, though, which is probably fortunate.”

“Oh,” said Elliot.  “But those weren’t inventors.  They were Fakes.”

“If I were going to invent something,” I told him.  “I think it would be an Esteem Engine.”

“That doesn’t sound like a particularly good invention,” he said, in a voice of discouragement.

“That’s just what they said about the Horseless Carriage,” I said.  "But look at what's driving on the highways and byways today."

The face of my son informed that he had no idea what my invention would be.

I know that there have been many great inventors.  They have created Amazing Devices that allow one to speak to others in different continents – without even having a single wire attached to them.  There are even engines that will power a Ship of Earth into orbit.  Few of these things make a difference in how people feel or provide them with the encouragement to live their days in a fulfilled fashion.

It would be such a blessing to have an engine that boosted a person’s self esteem.  I could see public schools around the country purchasing these by the armful.

Even as I ponder the subject, I know that this an area where we need no new invention or technology.  Instead we simply need to use the tools we already have at hand.

Romans 15:2 says, "Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, to build him up."  Mayhap, if just a bit of the attention paid to designing new electronics was paid to Simple Encouragement, much good would come to pass.  For this is one area in which skill is not as crucial as effort.

It might be nice to have an Esteem Engine, but the reality is that technology cannot take the place of personal interaction in matters of the heart.  If we only used our words with wisdom and kindness, we could help others.  If we only spoke with encouragement, this world could be a better place.