SheldonTimes

Today I came across a blog post "Morning Lace" in which an American expatriate in Japan reminisces about a large box of lace. Before his move to Japan he had left a corporate job to pursue other interests that included a flea market table stocked with items he scavenged from a dump. Finding and selling the lace represented a turning point in his life, and it would return to his memory over the years. As he grew older the meaning of lace rescued from a dump changed, and he ends his post:

The way, way less than a million dollars I made from that box got me to Japan, where this morning the lace came back to me as it does sometimes, though the older I get, the less and less the money part of it looms and the more and more the lace itself stands out, and with it a growing pride in the fact that I saved all that delicately wrought beauty from destruction, sent it on through time to other lives and eyes, where all that art and all it meant will not be lost.

That was one of this morning's gifts to me.

Frugality's emphasis is on saving money, and the Japanese concept of mottanai stresses saving resources, and I value them both, but the "art and all it meant" speak to me so much more strongly.