Truly live with free resources
Anna Barbour
Get a Life
I believe it was the so very wise Mel Gibson who once said (in "Braveheart") that "every man dies but not every man really lives." And then he proceeded to really live, painting his face in bold, I'm-going-to-save-my-land blue, raising a big broadsword over his head and kicking some British butt. People don't "live" anymore quite like William Wallace did. I wonder why?
That's my question for the day. Why the heck don't we fight the British anymore? No, not exactly, that's a separate issue. I want to know why the heck the apathy of individuals, at least in the United States, has skyrocketed; why people are everywhere so depressed, bored, tired of living or generally unimpressed by life? I'd also like to know why boys can play video games until their eyeballs fall out on Monday and be back playing more games on Wednesday, but that's also a separate issue.
Now, I've pondered the apathy of people, and I've come to some conclusions. People are apathetic because they buy water. We buy water. We also buy sunlight, but I will discuss this in a moment.
Why do we buy water? We buy water because we have no sense. In a two-hour time period at the Huddle, $30 worth of water will easily be purchased. If you do the math and analyze a lot of factors, you will come up with statistically significant figures concerning people's water buying habits. People have lost the will to get free water. We have discovered that a fresh bottle of Evian is so much easier for us to obtain than standing by the old-fashioned drinking fountain with an old but faithful, bent-up water bottle. We've got to have new, new, new. Have we lost our minds? The water in South Bend, after its purification processes, is fine.
Now, imagine this scenario: Next spring break you decide to go to Baja California. As you are flying over Death Valley, your plane goes down. You survive but you wish you were dead because you are stranded in Death Valley. We all know that in Death Valley any water is good water so why can't we translate this extreme love of free-flowing, Death Valley water into our normal, everyday lives?
Because we have lost the gift of appreciation somewhere in the midst of fast food, Land Cruisers and 32-screen movie theaters, we have lost the ability to appreciate the freer things in life. And because we can no longer appreciate what comes freely, cheaply, naturally, how can we expect ourselves to know happiness? Nothing will ever be good enough in a world where people would rather buy bottled water than have almost the exact same water for free.
This brings me to my second agenda —the American need to buy sunlight. Now, what the heck is this all about? The goal of tanning is basically to burn oneself, and we are actually willing to pay for burnt skin? I'm sure Freud would have a field day with this and would probably triple his hourly rates for people with these tanning issues. Why don't you just throw your money away? Just flush it down the toilet as soon as you get it. I am assured that people have lost appreciation for living when they decide to closet themselves in a tanning bed.
All right, it is faster than natural tanning and much more even over the entire body surface. But it costs money. Some things ought not be bought. Love. Love cannot be bought. Air. Air cannot be bought. Or can it? There have been oxygen bars in Tokyo. Are we just going to name a price for everything?
As soon as everything has a price tag, everything is in jeopardy of becoming unobtainable. When cars were considered unnecessary luxury items, people did not need them. Now cars are very important to everyday life for most people. But what happens when you take something you already cannot live without, like water, air or love, and you make it profitable? A person can live without a car but not without the essentials for physical and mental well-being.
So, in a decidedly roundabout way, the next time you buy water or pay for sunlight, you are contributing to your own unhappiness. You have chosen not to really live. Sometimes it is necessary to have discomfort, to take the longer route or to reuse one water bottle over and over so that in the end, the ability to appreciate the naturally free things, to appreciate life, can still exist. Don't lose the ability to appreciate life.
And for God's sake, stop buying gold and blue, twice-as-expensive M&Ms at football games, when the regular ones, already overpriced, taste exactly the same, melt-in-the-mouth-not-in-the-hand, exactly the same. One is tempted to tell people who buy water, tans and the most expensive colored M&Ms that she also has some land in Florida she would like to sell them.
Anna Barbour is a junior theology and pre-med major. Her column runs every other Wednesday.
The views expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.
All Viewpoint Stories for Wednesday, November 8, 2000
