But a properly trained monkey could do that...
Arising from a comment I made on someone's lj this morning, about our tendency to undervalue our own strengths and competencies (in whatever area) and gaze enviously at other people's, and generally feel inferior.
(Which I suspect to be a fairly common thing. I do it myself all the time.)
After commenting I was just glancing at one of the Katharine Whitehorn collections on my shelves, and in the intro she was talking about having a conversation with a brain surgeon friend.
Brain surgeon was going 'I don't know how you do it, writing a column every week, whenever I have to write up a piece for The Lancet I sweat blood, I lie awake at nights, it takes days and even weeks' (woez, woez, torment, etc).
To which she responded, 'But you cut into people's skulls all the time, which is not something most people could do.'
To which his response was 'It's not difficult, anybody could do it with the right training.'
Okay, oft have I moaned anent members of a certain learned profession who think that Being An Archivist for the records of their institution or professional body would be a nice little retirement project, that me, my retirement project is going to be a little light brain surgery, maybe one afternoon a week, just as a hobby.
But, honestly, I don't think that just anybody could do it. And that the training and experience and the skills that come with those are actually significant.
(What also springs to mind is people who are effusively appreciative of things that are not all that difficult, but don't register gratitude for something one has done which is above and beyond what they might expect.)
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