“To create is to live twice.”
-Albert Camus
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Quote of the Week
Category: Creative Living
My Wardrobe Challenge
If you use Pinterest or read women’s magazines or websites, you may have come across this concept: Turn around all the hangers in your closet. After you wear something, hang it up with the hanger facing the other direction. You will easily be able to see which clothes you’ve worn and which you haven’t. After six months or a year, donate or sell any items you haven’t worn.
It’s not a bad idea, but because I fully Marie Kondo-ed my closet last year (more about that later) and am generally pretty good about regularly purging clothes that are in poor condition or don’t fit well, this concept didn’t seem all that useful to me. But it sparked a slightly different idea.
Rethinking Gift-Giving
I recently came across this post on gift-giving from Mr. Money Mustache and thought it was worth sharing. The post is several years old and references Mother’s Day, but it applies to all the occasions on which our culture tells us we are supposed to give gifts.
Ideally, gift-giving should be a way of expressing our appreciation for the people we love, making their day a little brighter, and perhaps easing their burden. At its worst, gift-giving can become another obligation, and the gifts we give can sometimes add to the burdens of the receiver as well as the giver. I’ve gone to holiday gatherings without gifts to give and have been embarrassed when others brought gifts for everyone, including me. The gifts were not personally selected for each individual, but were, I suspect, bought en masse out of either a sense of requirement or a desire for the gift-giver to feel good about herself. These gifts were not meaningful, but they provoked feelings of guilt and obligation in me. That is not what gift-giving should do.
A Curiosity Manifesto
I’ve become convinced that curiosity is the solution to most of our problems, individually and globally. How can that be, you ask? How could centuries-old conflicts, climate change, interpersonal strife, and disease epidemics be cured by mere curiosity? Well, you’re on the path to finding answers simply because you’ve begun by asking questions.
The Last Man on Earth: What Would You Do?
One of my favorite TV shows right now is The Last Man on Earth. The show’s premise is that a viral outbreak has killed nearly all people and animals, save a few who were immune or unexposed. At the beginning of the show, we meet Phil Miller, who’s been traveling the country trying to find other survivors after losing everyone he knew. He’s miserable and lonely, and just when he’s about to give up on life, he meets another survivor, Carol. As the series progresses, a few others join them. Phil struggles to adjust to living with people again. The circumstances bring together dissimilar people who likely would not have crossed paths before the virus, and we watch them try to figure out how to live in this new world. The show is quirky, funny, creative, and at times poignant, though it’s not as depressing as you might guess.