Simplicity

Daveen and I have finally picked a date to go to a tailor to have some new shirts made for me. It seems that I’m running out. Yup, down to my last eighteen shirts!

The need to have an extra supply of something kind of runs in my family.  My mother had extremely narrow feet. So, when she found shoes that fit – she would buy every available pair. I like my shirts a certain way and insist that they have two pockets. Those are almost never available ready-made in stores. So off to the tailor we go.

But why the need to have so many? Years ago, we visited a rice paddy in Bali and met the people working there.

We were generously invited into the three-room home of one of the farmers. I was struck by the sight of a single white shirt resting on a table.

“For tomorrow,” he said.

I asked where he kept his other clothes.

“For tomorrow,” he repeated, as if that would help me understand. And eventually I did.

That was his only other shirt – the one he would wear tomorrow. I couldn’t help but make a comparison between my life of many shirts, and his life of only two.

Perhaps I’m better off. But sometimes I wonder…

Alan