DARREL BRISTOW-BOVEY: The power of scarcity
'I think we are happiest and most fulfilled when we are intensely and lovingly aware of the things we use that are finite'
I was shaving the other day and, because I live in Cape Town right now, I saved the water for purposes of re-purposing. Afterwards I examined it and it wasn’t a lot but I found it deeply interesting, simply because I had never before seen precisely how much water is used when I shave. I stood there studying the water, obscurely pleased to have acquired this new knowledge, wondering exactly how I had lived so long and shaved so many times without knowing precisely how much each shave consumes. It seemed suddenly baffling to me to have spent so long being so casually uninterested.I had a similar experience when showering in a bath with the plug in, and being able to see precisely how much water usually runs down the drain. Please be assured this isn’t one of those tedious exercises in lecturing you about how much water we waste without thinking; as a matter of fact I was pleasantly surprised by how little it used. My point is that I think of myself as an enquiring person but I can’t b...
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