Love is Hate
I have a love/hate relationship with my fellow humans. I took notice of that anew this week after God pointed out to me that I have a lot of things in my kitchen of which there’s just a little bit left. Enough amaretto to fill half a glass. A scant handful of chocolate covered almonds. One last can of tomato soup.
Sure, things have to get down to being almost out before they can get down to being actually out, but that’s not what God was pointing out. What she forced me to admit is that I’ll often go like gangbusters through the first ninety percent of something and then that last ten percent will sit around for a very long time. On a lot of stuff I get around this by buying more of it, before it gets down to that last ten percent. That way I can keep going like gangbusters until I get tired of whatever it is.
Where does my love/hate relationship with humanity come into this? It’s simple, I just don’t trust that when I get to the store, whatever it is that I want will be there. Sometimes it’s that I’m afraid that I’ll end up really wanting something that I ran out of before I get a chance to go to the store and get more, but more often it’s that I just don’t trust the store to keep carrying it, or the manufacturer to keep making it. I mean, there’s only been one shampoo in my life that worked really well with my hair. I used that shampoo for years. I occasionally tried others but none of them left my hair as nice as the one I liked.
Then I went to the store and they were out of it. It’s been more than twenty years now and they’re still out of it. I know that means it’s not made anymore, but somewhere in the back of my head I keep thinking that if I keep thinking they’re just out of it, that maybe someday they’ll get it back in. But they won’t.
And somewhere in the back of my head, I think I’m convinced that everything I like will go that way. The store will be out of it and they’ll be out of it forever. Which makes that last can of soup kind of precious. At the same time it’s too precious to actually eat, but only precious because it’s something good to eat. This is the kind of cognitive dissonance that I try not to spend too much time thinking about, but when I do… Well I end up thinking that I love the things that modern society makes available to us, but I also end up thinking that I hate that nothing lasts forever.
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