I heard this quite a bit while I was growing up. I heard it almost as much as I heard, "It's a good thing you're accustomed to hardship."
Clearly I was deprived as a child.
Clearly I learned what sarcasm was at a young age.
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| Hey Dad! Cool rain suit. So wise. |
In a rare moment of sincerity (also a classic Dad line) I've never been in want of anything in my life. Okay, well, maybe
this bag, but feeling guilty about potentially buying this bag falls under the umbrella of "high quality problem".
Yesterday, I had to make a quick turn around between getting home from work and getting to my yoga class at 7, and in doing so I forgot to grab my hot yoga towel. I realized about a minute after I left the apartment that I had forgotten it, and the first thing that ran through my mind was, "Damn! I
need that towel but I don't have time to turn around and get there in time to get a good spot in the studio!"
So I didn't go back. I thought, "People do yoga without fancy towels all the time! I can survive class without my towel."
It's a good thing I'm accustomed to hardship.
And then, for an hour and fifteen minutes when I should have been "present" in my yoga practice, I was wrestling with why I
needed my towel, and slipping on my sweaty mat through all of my vinyasas.
Sure, there are towels at the gym for me to use and they even wash them for me afterwards, but my yoga class just wasn't as good with that dinky towel that felt kind of like a Brillo pad because it had been washed so many times. My sweaty feet, hands, well, everything, made it hard to do everything from Warrior II to Downward Dog, and I kept having to stop in the middle of my flows to adjust the wrinkles in the towel. My yoga mat was like a sweaty slip 'n' slide.
Maybe I didn't
need my Manduka eQua mat towel that fits my Manduka eko mat
perfectly, but I sure wanted it.
Which got me thinking about the differences between "needing"and "wanting", and then got me thinking about my grocery lists.
Take the ride on my train of thought, will you?
My grocery list is the epitome of that blurry gray area between "needing" and "wanting" for me.
Sure I
need vegetables, and black beans, and crackers, and cheese, but sriracha? Flax? Tahini? These items are probably flirting with
wanting.
Okay, not flirting - straight up hitting on "wanting".
I could certainly survive on canned vegetable soup, but I
like food! I like cooking, and I like eating food that's good for me. If I have the means to make black bean burgers from scratch with a sriracha sauce, I'm gonna do it. And yeah, I'm going to splurge for the Ghirardelli chocolate chips because they make a mean
Flourless Chocolate Cake.
Which got me thinking about my wardrobe choices for the duathlon I'm doing in a week and a half (if the race coordinators ever e-mail me back with the location - another story for another time). Do I really
need to shell out close to $100 for triathlon capris simply because I don't want to run in my bulky bike shorts and I don't want to bike 33 miles with an unpadded butt? Couldn't I put that $100 to better use?
No, I don't need tri capris. Yes, I could spend $100 in a more practical fashion. Or better yet, I could not spend it at all and save it for something cooler like an advanced degree. Or a pretty house!
So I'm well aware - in most, no, ALL aspects of my life "We're not talking 'need' here", which I am eternally grateful for. I buy the groceries I want, I buy the J.Crew clothes I want (well, the ones that are on sale), I buy the "green" cleaning supplies I like because it makes me feel good about myself, even though they're almost twice as expensive as the supposedly "environment-killing" kind. But sometimes it's good to rough it in a yoga class with a ratty old gym towel, because it makes holding that Warrior II that much harder, it makes the money I do save that much more valuable (there's no sriracha in my house), and it makes that Flourless Chocolate Cake that much more delicious.
