Having found this line by chance (it was part of a movie ad posted alongside the rising escalator at Broadview subway station), I wrestled with it as I walked: "Please list," it said, "the things that you consider essential to your life." Even while knowing that I detest this sort of effort to pin me down, I couldn't turn away from the challenge.
Things? Essential to my life? I couldn't come up with even one. The parameters were vague. Are eyes, for example, "things"? I'd hate to do without my eyes, since reading is my joy. But eyes surely are not what the question is about.
Walking, I experienced that moment of one-sided auditory blankness that signifies the (temporary) death of one of my hearing aids. The blankness means that the machine has shut itself off, and this event is followed within a second by a chime that says, "Here I am turning myself on again." Overall, what I have are two hearing aids on the verge of giving up the ghost. Apparently six years is considered old age for hearing aids, a fact that makes them even pricier than I had thought at first.
The timing of the blankness and subsequent chime brought to my mind how useful those hearing aids are, so I was able to put them at the top of the list. What things do I see as essential to my life? Hearing aids.
Before that minor epiphany, however, my mind, grappling with the very idea of essential things, went to the kitchen and came up with the pastry blender, without which I'd find it difficult to make both guacamole and refried beans. But it becomes an "essential thing" only if I see cooking as an activity essential to my life. If I lived, say, at 2 Benvenuto Place, in one of the condo units above Scaramouche restaurant, I might live a very nice life without a pastry blender.
So put your own mind on this question. What are the "things" essential to your life? Do you have as much trouble with this as I do? People? Yes. I can list essential people, such as DinoVino WineScribe. But he—and other people—can hardly be labelled a "thing." Are we talking about consumer goods? Is faith a "thing"? Is love?
Things: a warm coat? But if I were to live in a place with perpetual sunshine, it wouldn't be essential. Shoes? Please, don't let me list Fluevogs as something essential to my life! To my self-esteem, perhaps, but not to my life.
I flounder with this issue. If not people or abstract traits, then what? "Please list the things you consider essential to your life." It's all about the search, isn't it? Joseph Campbell says the answer to everything is simply to immerse ourselves in life. I feel a need to view over and over those interviews he did with Bill Moyer—they are so rich with meaning that I can't absorb all that he says, and even less can I apply his wisdom to how I have lived (or haven't lived) or am (or am not) living my life. Immerse myself in my life. Engage with it. Oh dear, Joseph, give me a little time to take this up.
And I believe I've come to the end of all this seeking for essential things. One last stab at it: the roof over my head, to which I can happily give the name "home"? The comforts of my life? But what are they, if not people? What things do I consider essential to my life? I'll have to keep pondering.
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