Gratitude Encourages Conservation

The Trousers of Theseus

I’m a bit of a magpie, always on the lookout for some shiny piece of glass or bit of string to spirit away to my cache of treasures. As a child a favorite movie was “Bedknobs and Broomsticks”, where a trio of light-fingered orphans turn a bed into a magic carpet via the ingenious application of bric-a-brac and the aid of a spinster witch. An entertaining lesson on the transformational – dare I say transportive – powers of junk. Not to mention towards the end there’s that soaring ode to bargains and flea markets when they need to resupply their stock of tchotchkes. I hesitate to declare such a film as foundational to my own scappy and rather patchwork sense of navigating the world but it was certainly more relatable than the antics of a banker’s children raised by a singing nanny. Plus it had Angela Lansbury on a motorcycle.

I’m not a hoarder. Not everything “sparks joy”. But I also can’t stand to see the beautiful go to waste, no matter the origin. So I keep an open eye to whatever lessons I might be able to glean from anyone and anywhere, especially other cultures, and which I might then integrate into my own life. I find it’s one of the principal joys of travel - the exposure to new ideas - but even when at home and tragically denied the comforts of a flying bed I still look for tips from elsewhere in the world. You don’t have to leave your own country to learn from the good sense of another. I learned sashiko before ever visiting Japan, for example.

But I was rather underwhelmed by the suggestions of a string of international videos I came across quite recently. The advice wasn’t bad so much as underwhelming. A video on thrifty British habits advised saving takeout containers for packaging leftovers and to turn off the lights whenever exiting a room. One on French money saving tips suggested getting a library card, browsing thrift stores, and taking local vacations. Another from Japan recommended writing a grocery list before shopping so as to avoid overspending and also to keep a monthly budget.

All of them surely sensible, but there was nothing culturally specific about any of it, yet each host confidently delivered their advice as if it were unique to their own part of the world, as though no one but the Brits had thought to save containers, only the French would make use of library cards, and budgeting was peculiarly Japanese. I wondered just how aware they were of the global existence of common sense, or had the videos been longer they might continue with some suggestion like ‘now this may seem unusual to all you foreigners out there, but in my country whenever we’re done shopping for the day we don’t just pitch our pocket change in the trash. No, we drop it in a jar.’

Curiously, I noticed that all of them, no matter where in the world they came from, still focused entirely on the individual as a means of prosperity, or at least of security. None of them suggested such money saving strategies as consulting with your neighbors on who has which tools and to pass the information among yourselves so that you can call upon each other rather than a rental service for the next time you need to put up or take down a fence. Or to do the same with skills and trade experience. Who, for example, has knowledge of accounting and can help with taxes in exhange, perhaps, for landscaping. Perhaps organize or join a carpool. Or to join a mutual aid society or start one in your community if one doesn’t already exist. In other words, to see oneself as a part of rather than apart from the community. That French suggestion about a library card was perhaps the closest any of them came to seeing oneself as integral to the whole, but still focused on the individual. How to stay afloat against the current rather than raise the tide.

A mix of sashiko (Japanese) and farmhouse darning (Western) to repair a weak area on the back pocket

But if you want to stay restricted to the self - and you don’t mind getting just a little bit woo-woo - none of them suggested some such money saving advice as mindfulness; to consider the resource, to be present with oneself, and to honor the material be it cloth, or string, or time. When the Japanese sit down to eat, for example, they do not thank god or the cook or the farmer or fisher or whoever, but they thank the food itself. By being aware of what the food has given up to be there and provide them with nourishment they are more likely to enjoy it and significantly less likely to waste it. Gratitude encourages conservation. This is a tremendously useful habit and certainly applicable to realms beyond the culinary that I’m surprised the Japanese video did not mention it. I don’t think it’s ridiculous at all to thank a tool or piece of machinery for reliable service. We’ve likely all of us been in that absolute beater of a jalopy that still delivered us to our destination in spite of much trial along the way.

To thank a favorite pair of jeans, for example, acknowledging the long chain of farmers, artisans, and merchants who made it possible – and how that chain will have to repeat in its entirety from the very beginning if one wants a brand new pair – makes one far more likely to treat them with care, or my personal preferred word, with honor. Now it is not necessary to erect a shrine and preserve said jeans behind glass any more than the good silverware and dishes should forever remain safely untouched in the China cabinet, but to use them as intended and to keep them at it as long as possible and in good condition. (By which I mean cold wash, only when absolutely filthy, and air dry – please! – if I can slip in just a few words here.)

Though eventually even the best jeans will still have to be repaired. My own favorite jeans – like that magical bedknob from the childhood film – came to me as castoffs, in this case mixed in with a bag of other blown out pants, which I was advised by the giver would do only for cutting to pieces and using for patchwork. But though the crotch was torn open, the cuffs rotted to shreds, and there was a divot the size of a Brazil nut over the front left pocket, the jeans were also my size. I looked at them with the shrewdness but also the pride of a pair of newlyweds considering a modest fixer upper. True, you could see where the work would have to be done – that was obvious to anyone – but also my, what good bones.

I began at the edges and worked my way in. I rehemmed the cuffs, patched the crotch and that divot, and reinforced both legs with long swatches of sashiko, patching them from the inside. Whenever another hole appears, so too does another opportunity, and there are now a hodgepodge of darns and patches holding them together and still I find more g*dd*mn holes. (Excuse me, more g*dd*mn opportunities.)

I’ve heard other menders describe their own such jeans as ‘pants of Theseus’ and I expect with time the same will happen to these, where I will no longer be able to say what was added and what was original. But they are of course, unique, true to my own style, and if nothing else good advertising. They suggest I know what I’m doing. That I practice what I preach. That I walk the walk in the most comfortable – and comfortably one-of-a-kind – pair of jeans that I own. Like that rusted out jalopy, they’ve still somehow gotten me just where I wanted to go.

One would almost have to work not feel some sort of gratitude for that.