See the Jewelry

Respect: An Opinion Page

So... you struck it rich. You hit the big one. You proved them all wrong. You found literal buried treasure and now, by God, you are going to claim your respect from the poor slobs who obviously don't know what they're doing because you found it and they didn't. Do yourself a big favor; sit down, shut up and read this before you go forth and try to change the world so that it revolves around you. The word of the day is "perspective" and you'll be happier in the end if you get a little of it before you do anything. Here in Maine, miners who have any degree of success are big fish in a dismally small pond already filled with lots of other fish, big, medium and small. If you presume your importance because of your success, two things are going to happen:
  1. People will get mad at you and.
  2. People will laugh at you.

As we develop this avenue, the sad, inescapable truth is that you cannot ever command respect for anything you have done. You have to earn it.

Here is a list of things NOT to do if you want to earn respect:

  1. DO NOT overreact.
  2. DO NOT say "I told you so" and rub your find in peoples' faces. Would you respect anyone who did that to you?
  3. DO NOT assume the position of "expert". Face it, you blew up some ledge and you lucked out and that's all there is to it.
  4. DO NOT get paranoid. People are going to sneak into your mine site and steal things. Accept it, shrug it off, go on with life. There is no rock worth shooting someone over. Besides, you need your sleep.
  5. DO NOT swagger around, brag and look smug. Everyone will just want to punch you and eventually someone will.
  6. DO NOT seek professional legal counsel. Lawyers just love it when people find gems. Do you ever wonder why certain ultra- successful miners are not millionaires? Do you ever wonder why many lawyers are?

Things to do if you DO want to earn respect:

  1. DO be gracious and generous. Make it so people leave you with positive feelings.
  2. DO continue to respect the Elders (and we all know the people I am referring to), even if you think they are clue less, old-school, senile old farts. Remember, if everything goes well, YOU will someday be a clue less, old-school, senile old fart too. Besides, they are in their position for a reason. They have all "been there, done that, bought the t-shirt".". Listen to them and LEARN.
  3. DO bask in your temporary glory and remember that it is FLEETING. Tomorrow, something just as interesting will happen somewhere else.
  4. DO keep your ego in check. It has an evil tendency to blind you to reality... and deafen you to behind-your-back ridicule.
  5. DO remember your friends and the people who helped you. Very simply, this is just the human thing to do. No one respects disloyalty.

The idea of uncovering the ultimate beauty that nature can produce... of discovering hidden troves of sparkling gems and freeing them from their 300,000,000 year old prisons is so incredibly magical, wondrous, unparalleled in anything else in the world. We owe it to the very crystals themselves to treat them with respect, to refrain from tainting their loveliness with our own human flaws of greed and arrogance. Everything associated with them should be positive and we have the capability to make it so, but some of us choose not to and that just isn't right. Maybe we could all try just a little harder.

creaserjewelers@aol.com