I Need A New Want

I’ve been trying to stay real honest with myself lately about my wants and needs.  And recognizing when either of them is already met.  A big part of that is pure economics: I can’t afford to indulge all my whims.  But mostly it’s…something else.  Not spiritual really, because I’m not.  But something like that.  Secular spirituality, maybe.

I’m gearing up, literally and figuratively, for a new job.  I needed steel toed boots.   So I went out and bought them, because you can’t really make do by duct-taping tin cans to your toes.  I also wanted to buy a new set of pants and shirts.  Not to have stylin’ new togs, but because I’ve been spoiled by the uniform at my old job.  I love wearing a uniform.  I don’t have to spend anytime thinking about what I’m going to wear to work.  So I was inclined to recreate that for the new job.  But even shopping on the cheap, I did the math, and I’d be spending at least a hundred bucks on clothes.  To make my life marginally more convenient.  Not a huge investment, but I had to stop and ask myself if I really needed to make it.  I mulled it over, and decided I could manage with what I’ve already got for now. 

My grandfather was a child of the Depression.  So every penny counted to him.  He liked to tell us, “Use it up, wear it out. Make it last, or do without.”  The pre-environmental movement “reduce, reuse, recycle.” 

I’m pretty good about my three R’s.  I’ve got a pait of boots I’ve been using since ‘98.  They’ve been intensely worn. The leather is still basically good.  Beat to hell and back, scuffed, paint spattered, sure, but still sound.  The soles are shot: most of the lugs are worn flat (some are just plain missing), and there’s a split all the way across the forefoot of one boot.   But I’m loathe to throw them out.   With a new sole they’d be good shoes again.  But it’d cost more to resole them than it would to replace them.  And somebody somewhere could probably use them just as they are.  But I don’t know how to get them to that person. 

So I’ll hold on to them, and wear them out some more.  They’ll keep company with the other three or four pair of shoes I have that I can’t bear to get rid.   My lawn-mowing, snow-shoveling, gutter cleaning shoes.  The shoes that all have a little life left in them.  The shoes I make last even though I don’t really need to.  The shoes that remind me that even at the low end of the American economic ladder, I still have it pretty good.  Very good, actually.

The shoes that keep me grounded.