To the people I will never meet

Saw something weird today as I was walking around the building where I work. I kept thinking of the people who laid the foundation, tiled the walkways, stuccoed the sides of the building in arching S-shaped curves. I picture them sweeping their trowels across the canvas of stucco. Who was making art, who was making money? I see them eating lunch in the open courtyard where now they've installed fake carpet grass, and constructed a fake river, and placed little bronze statues at strategic places where children might be playing, reading, napping, exploring. I think of the men whose memories are faded, who maybe don't remember the hours they devoted to this building which houses so many people's livelihoods. How many other invisibles are we indebted to? I wonder who ground this pepper, picked these bananas, molded these noodles, crafted this table that I sit at, sewed my shirt? Who, for that matter, thought of all these things like blogs, email, television, cell phones, computer that I take for granted? It is very strange not to know who these people are. Stranger that I don't think about it most of the time.