"The art of our necessities is strange
That can make vile things precious."
__ William Shakespeare, "King Lear"
A touch of necessity may remind us uncomfortably of our mortality and transience, but it can also bring us to greater resourcefulness and clarity. The human potential to overcome adversity has been proved in many extreme and hazardous circumstances. Those who can make do survive; those who are helpless without their conveniences do not. When life is pared to the bare bones, when stone soup is all there is to eat, the survivor will ensure that at least the soup is hot and reviving!
The clarity that necessity brings, that we feel when inessentials are stripped away, can be a great gift - one that helps put our life back on track. This is why many cultures have spiritual beggars and mendicants, men and women who forswear the luxuries of life in order to experience the space that necessity makes around them.
The ownership of good things by all is an ideal within our society. Though that ideal is complicated by the fact that one person's luxury is another person's necessity, by any standard we are far from it. Valuing the things that matter and not undervaluing our ability to be resourceful will help us to a more simple and less consumer-focused way of life, as well as setting a scale of necessity that brings us clarity.
"Choose one convenient thing on which you depend in your life and contemplate the difference
its lack would create. How would you manage without it; what would you use instead?"
[From: "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews]
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