Don't save things 'for best'....

Or, in my case, that should read "Don't save things 'for the right temperature'."

Last week, we had snow, for the first time in around a decade. And in the sales ten years ago, I bought some very warm boots with very thick rubber soles. They're not the kind I would usually buy since I prefer leather to synthetic fabric. Nevertheless, I was willing to use them once the temperatures got down to minus zero degrees Celcius.

And that is what happened last week: freezing-cold temperatures. Hence, on Wednesday, I finally put them on for the very first time after trying them on in the shoe shop, and trudged to the gym. Before putting them into the locker, I looked at the soles to see that they were clean, and they were.

Walking the kilometre back home, I noticed that the left heel didn't feel right and when I looked down I saw that the sole of the shoe had burst open and was in tatters. I was shocked, thinking that maybe someone at the gym had sabotaged my boots (I had noticed that the padlock hadn't closed properly). 

However, on consideration, I realised that, over all this time, the rubber had degraded and when I checked online, my suspicion was confirmed.

So...after all this time, when I finally used my spanking-new, wonderfully warm and toasty boots, they immediately disintegrated and I can now just throw them away. After one single wear. 

What was the point of keeping them safe and clean for all that time? Couldn't I have worn them when the temperature was, say, 5 degrees C instead of waiting for minus 2?

Although the boots had been bought in the sales, they turned out to be a waste of money.

A lot of people do the same: they keep things for a certain situation, which often never comes. My German gran had a lot of lovely household linen. And most of it was still unused by the time she died at the age of 100 years and 8 months. What pleasure had she got out of possessing all this lovely stuff? None whatsoever.

Now over the last few years, a lot of my neighbours and the neighbours of my German aunt in Berlin have died:  4 of my neighbours (2 women in their late 80s/early 90s), a woman of 62, a man of 58) and the two neighbours of my aunt in Berlin (one year apart from each other to the day, he was 92, she was in her late 70s).

You know what happened with the stuff in their flat? All thrown away. One son didn't even bother to accept what his mother had left so the landlords had to pay to get someone to cart everything away. The niece of the 62-year-old threw everything out apart from some sentimental items belong to her grandmother. The family of the 58-year-old? Everything onto the street for the bulky rubbish collection. The son of my aunt's neighbours? He has allowed some people to take what they want and the rest will be taken away by a stranger and sold off. He wants nothing of his parents' possessions.

And apart from the niece, no-one bothered to sift through any stuff. All junked en masse without being sorted or looked at.

As existentialism  teaches us....you live, you die, and everything you treasured is just thrown away.

The moral of the story is, therefore, that you don't save anything for a time that may never come. Enjoy all your nice stuff now.

Here is more on the subject: https://invisiblyme.com/saving-it-for-a-special-occasion-wasting-your-life-away/