Effortless Effervescence

What do you suppose this

has in common with this

and this?

(For the visually challenged among us, let me describe the three images above. One is a central air conditioning unit, much like one you’d see in any backyard in American suburbia. The second is a 17-inch Mac Book, which is the laptop model my parents bought for me when I graduated from college in May 2003. The last photo is an 8-cup coffeemaker with a thermal carafe, similar to the coffeemaker that has served me faithfully for seven years.)

I ask again, what do you think these three possessions have in common? The answer, dear friends, is that all three of them quit on me in one 72-hour period just a few weeks ago. Saturday, our air conditioning died. (May I remind you that I live in the MOST HUMID PLACE IN AMERICA? Okay, that’s not true. The most humid places in America are in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest (who knew?), but Virginia Beach gets damn hot and muggy during the summer.) Okay, fine, we made do, and had a great time with some friends who came over for a cookout that night. So we were hot and sticky! Oh well! We just drank more beer to help us cool off.

Well, Sunday, I awoke to find that one of those friends had spilled a cocktail on my laptop. Not only was it wet and sticky (something you NEVER want your electronics to be!) it was unresponsive. I managed to get it to work for about five minutes, long enough to copy some important files (that I SHOULD have backed up two months ago) onto a CD before it pooped out altogether, yet I was filled with woe.

On Monday, when I stumbled into the kitchen to pour myself a cup of caffeinated delight from the pot my husband had made that morning, I found that the carafe had leaked ALL. OVER. THE COUNTER. Repeat: the thermal carafe that’s supposedly to stay tightly sealed until I come along to partake of the javaliciousness had somehow sprung and leak and there was lukewarm coffee ALL. OVER. THE COUNTER.

The disappointment of the defective coffeemaker was the proverbial icing on the cake, the last straw, if you will. We could also say that it pushed me over the edge, that I came undone, unglued, lost it. Whatever trite cliche you wish to use will likely get the point across: I was Not Happy. I was, in fact, Really Mad and Sad and Feeling Bad. Who was I mad at – the inanimate objects that had disappointed me? No, even more ludicrous: I was mad at God.

If you want to tell me how dumb it is to be mad at God over a broken coffeemaker, which can easily be replaced by walking into my local Wal-Mart with $30 in hand and participating in a five-minute sales transaction, go right ahead, because I agree with you wholeheartedly. It’s actually rather embarrassing that I got so upset over those three tiny spots of bad luck, that I took each one soooooo personally. Sure, I still had a roof over my head and food on my table, friends and family that love me and the cutest furbabies in the universe - but dammit, I was uncomfortable and irritated! My life was SO HARD! This must be how Job felt – cursed, afflicted, unloved, grieving. Speaking of Job, I told God, you’d better be setting me up for a HUUUUUGE blessing to pay me back for all the hardship I’d endured, being hot and sweaty and unable to check my email. I mean, come on. You can’t really expect a person to live like this, can you?

*ahem* See? Embarrassing.

It didn’t occur to me til about halfway through Tuesday that maybe I was missing the point here. Maybe the point wasn’t how bad I’ve got it, but how GOOD I’ve got it, and how often I forget that, and most of all that I don’t NEED a lot of these things I call necessities. I’ve never seen high-speed internet or Arabica beans on Mazlow’s Hierarchy of Needs, have you? Of course not. What we need to survive – and even thrive – is a lot less that what we think we do.

When all that finally DID occur to me, I wanted to shout, “How cute, an object lesson! Thanks for letting me know, God, I got it now! Thanks for all my cool stuff. I love it. I’d love it even more if you’d fix our air conditioning!”

And he did, with the assistance of a friend-of-a-friend who came out after hours and fixed the problem for free. (Want to know what the problem was? A clogged air filter. Dumbest thing ever, right? Should have been obvious, right? Well, apparently lots of people forget to change their filters, and it can cause some permanent damage to your air handling unit. So let my stupidity be a lesson for you!) My computer has sputtered into consciousness more than once in the past two weeks, but a few days ago it proudly announced that it wasn’t having any more of this computing nonsense. And the coffeemaker? Is in the trash, after an unsuccessful repair attempt, and we’re using our “back up coffeemaker.” (Read: old, ugly, and with zero bells-and-whistles.)

The “hardship” I’ve endured really got me thinking about NEEDS vs. WANTS. Interestingly, MSN featured an article about a poll that asked over 1,000 Americans whether they considered items such as dishwashers and televisions to be luxuries or necessities. Some of the items named I’d be hard-pressed to give up; for instance, if I didn’t have a car, I’d either have to bike 7.65 miles to work and back or spend 2 to 3 hours a day on a city bus. Other “luxury” items, such as the microwave, I could live without easily. I didn’t have a microwave for more than a year after I moved into my first apartment and never missed it.

Now, I’m not about to get all Thoreau on you guys. (Simplify! Simplify!) I promise I’m not moving into a mudhut by the Elizabeth River. I do, however, think it’s good for me to examine the choices I make about how to spend my time and money. Actually, I think it’s good for all of us to do this.

So tell me: What modern conveniences do you consider a necessity? What do you consider a luxury? What’s one thing you can’t fathom spending your money on?