A man opened his wife’s underwear drawer and found a silk paper-wrapped package. In it was something his wife got 8 or 9 years ago, but has never worn, saving it for a special occasion. He guessed it was a special occasion, so he put them with the clothing he was taking to the funeral home, for his wife had just died.
Maybe you also got that one from a forwarded email, with an inspirational reminder that if it’s worth doing or seeing, to do it now, because tomorrow is promised to no one. It goes on to say that we should live for today, and we should use our crystal glasses every day.
Here’s my take. I grew up in a house where a narra china cabinet occupies one whole wall, and Noritake dinnerware was displayed in matched sets. There were silver spoons, forks and knives, and the water glasses were so old and dainty that they shattered if you so much as tapped one with a spoon. There were teapots and teacups in fine porcelain, but I never tasted tea in that house.
My grandmother kept cans of imported corned beef and bars of imported beauty soap in a cabinet, to give as presents to visiting relatives. (I now wonder if she ever checked expiry dates; we seldom entertained and relatives rarely came.) My sister and I had Rainbow Brite dolls sent by an uncle from the States when we were little, but they stayed in their boxes and put on display for years. I stole mine when I left home to study in Manila when I was thirteen.
When I got married, I promised myself that my house will never have things set aside for special occasions. Well, we were poor to begin with, and that meant we did not have a lot of special things. The plates and glasses we received as wedding gifts were what we used in the house. We only had what we needed, from clothes to food to toys. But later, when things got better for us, we drank red wine for dinner and bought cake when we felt like eating some. We cooked special food on ordinary days, and one time we had plain grilled tilapia for New Year’s Eve, because we’ve used up the ‘holiday food’ menu in the days leading to the New Year.
But even if we could now afford bottles of perfume instead of supermarket-bought cologne, we only got what we needed. We're not yet filthy rich, after all. :-) We don’t have boxes of unopened underwear in our closet. My daughter has very few pretty Sunday clothes to hand down to her cousins, because all her clothes had been used well. We buy imported bath soap when we run out of them. We use wineglasses and water goblets for dinner, and my daughters have never broken one. We have Barbie dolls in the house; their hair is all mangled and they have missing shoes. One of them had already gone topless and had purple eyeshadow drawn with glitter pen before I realized it was a Collector’s Edition Barbie.
It doesn’t mean we’re leading an extravagant life by our standards, or that we’re not teaching our children how to treat valuable things well. I prefer to think that we chose to enjoy the nicer things so that we’ll have as few regrets as possible, so that we can get more out of life, learn more, be more. My daughters know spaghetti and ice cream is something they can have when I’m in the mood to cook and run to the store on a weekend, and not something they only eat at a friend’s birthday party, like when I was growing up. (Well, these days it's drive-thru food.) I wear my pretty dresses on Mondays.
We have special things, but only a few, and we use them well. If you had started a life of simplicity, it’s either you stuck with it by force of habit, or it made you greedy and you started hoarding imported corned beef.
Maybe you also got that one from a forwarded email, with an inspirational reminder that if it’s worth doing or seeing, to do it now, because tomorrow is promised to no one. It goes on to say that we should live for today, and we should use our crystal glasses every day.
Here’s my take. I grew up in a house where a narra china cabinet occupies one whole wall, and Noritake dinnerware was displayed in matched sets. There were silver spoons, forks and knives, and the water glasses were so old and dainty that they shattered if you so much as tapped one with a spoon. There were teapots and teacups in fine porcelain, but I never tasted tea in that house.
My grandmother kept cans of imported corned beef and bars of imported beauty soap in a cabinet, to give as presents to visiting relatives. (I now wonder if she ever checked expiry dates; we seldom entertained and relatives rarely came.) My sister and I had Rainbow Brite dolls sent by an uncle from the States when we were little, but they stayed in their boxes and put on display for years. I stole mine when I left home to study in Manila when I was thirteen.
When I got married, I promised myself that my house will never have things set aside for special occasions. Well, we were poor to begin with, and that meant we did not have a lot of special things. The plates and glasses we received as wedding gifts were what we used in the house. We only had what we needed, from clothes to food to toys. But later, when things got better for us, we drank red wine for dinner and bought cake when we felt like eating some. We cooked special food on ordinary days, and one time we had plain grilled tilapia for New Year’s Eve, because we’ve used up the ‘holiday food’ menu in the days leading to the New Year.
But even if we could now afford bottles of perfume instead of supermarket-bought cologne, we only got what we needed. We're not yet filthy rich, after all. :-) We don’t have boxes of unopened underwear in our closet. My daughter has very few pretty Sunday clothes to hand down to her cousins, because all her clothes had been used well. We buy imported bath soap when we run out of them. We use wineglasses and water goblets for dinner, and my daughters have never broken one. We have Barbie dolls in the house; their hair is all mangled and they have missing shoes. One of them had already gone topless and had purple eyeshadow drawn with glitter pen before I realized it was a Collector’s Edition Barbie.
It doesn’t mean we’re leading an extravagant life by our standards, or that we’re not teaching our children how to treat valuable things well. I prefer to think that we chose to enjoy the nicer things so that we’ll have as few regrets as possible, so that we can get more out of life, learn more, be more. My daughters know spaghetti and ice cream is something they can have when I’m in the mood to cook and run to the store on a weekend, and not something they only eat at a friend’s birthday party, like when I was growing up. (Well, these days it's drive-thru food.) I wear my pretty dresses on Mondays.
We have special things, but only a few, and we use them well. If you had started a life of simplicity, it’s either you stuck with it by force of habit, or it made you greedy and you started hoarding imported corned beef.
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