Why We Build
— Nicholas Peters
We do not build houses. We build the settings for the most important moments of other people's lives. Never lose sight of that.
My children,
Someone asked me recently what I do for a living, and I gave the easy answer: I build homes.
But that is not really true.
What we actually build are the settings for the most important moments of other people''s lives. The kitchen where a family will share ten thousand meals. The hallway where a child will take her first steps. The porch where an older couple will sit at the end of a long life and watch the sun go down together.
When you understand your work that way, the details stop feeling like details.
Whatever you do in this life — whether you build homes like your father, or design spaces like your mother, or do something neither of us can imagine yet — remember that your work is never just the object you produce. It is the life someone else gets to live because of it.
Do that work as if it matters. Because it does.
With love,
Dad