The thing about having favourite things is that you face a dilemma. Either you put your favourite thing somewhere safe so that nothing ever damages it and it can't get lost, or you use it all the time so that you can delight in whatever it is that makes it your favourite particular thing but risk perhaps damage or loss. The more you use something, the more likely it is that it will get damaged or lost.
I believe that there's little point having a favourite thing if you closet it away and never use it. I had a pair of trousers like that. Expensive and pretty and I never wore them in case I ruined them and soon I became pathologically incapable of wearing them at all. Hardly worth the money.
So these days I use my favourite things. But then I end up losing them. Particularly amber earrings, it seems. I love amber, and I wear my amber jewellery every day, but yeserday I lost an earring.
I guess that's how it goes. Delight in it and lose it to the big wild world one day, or hide it away and lose it to yourself immediately.
The trouble with favourites
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I have the same problem with my guitars, particularly the Rickenbackers. It got to the point where I barely ever took one out of its case, and used a cheapo copy I'd bought. Then I thought, what's the point?
Once in a conversation with a friend, I expressed my philosophy that the things I use every day — tools of life, if you will — ought to be the highest quality and the most supportive of my existence and tastes. Then they give me good feelings each day that I wear them, use them, see them, touch them, etc. My thought was it is worth it, to pay for those kinds of feelings about things.
Years later in a conversation with the same friend it came out regarding something or other, that I bought whatever was the cheapest and quickest at hand, planning that it not last forever but that as soon as it becomes worn I will replace it with another quick, inexpensive one, and that way always have a 'brand new' one at the ready.
My friend protested … but *you* are the one from whom I learned always to treat yourself to the *best*, if it is something you use and live with every day … !
I suppose there are two philosophies here, and I just happen to subscribe to both.
I've explained this philosophy almost verbatim several times. If you hide something away out of fear of it getting stolen, you've stolen it from yourself.
So, it is akin to: “If our response to terrorism is to dismantle our freedoms so as better to fight terrorism, then the terrorists will have won.”
So, it is akin to: “If our response to terrorism is to dismantle our freedoms so as better to fight terrorism, then the terrorists will have won.”
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