When I first came to New York to study music, I brought one saxophone with me. An original Selmer Mark VI alto was made in Paris in 1957. If you ask any sax player, this is arguably the finest horn ever made. The Stradivarius of saxophones. Charlie Parker, Cannonball Adderley, Paul Desmond, and Ornette Coleman all played on a Mark VI. I saved up for this horn for a few years by playing gigs, working as a courier, flipping hamburgers, and telemarketing. This horn has been with me since then, and it is still the horn I play today. It has a special meaning and significance that resonates with me every time I play it.
If this pandemic is reinforcing one thing to me, and I think most of us, it's that we need less stuff, but what we have should mean more. Earlier in my life, I lacked the means to own a lot of things. However, I discovered that when I started to earn more, my success brought me more choices, but I never had the desire to buy more things. I was just able to buy those things that mattered more to me. And yes, sometimes there were more expensive things and higher quality, but often they had qualities that simply meant more to me. Maybe I loved the design, the function, or the beauty of the object or maybe it was the ideas and philosophy around something that gave it more meaning to me. I wear one beautiful watch I bought myself as a reward for a personal goal I achieved because I love the design. I own the one motorcycle that I dreamed of riding when I was a kid because of the symbolism it provides. Your choices should matter to you. Like I mentioned in my blog last week, you have time now to really stop and think about what matters to you and why you make the choices you make.
Because those choices, while very personal, have a much larger effect. If we have learned nothing in the last few months, it is that our personal decisions have far-reaching effects on those around us. This tragedy has awakened many of us to our humanity. Whether it’s our workplace and the people in it now that we see their kids and dogs is the background of our Zoom calls, the teachers working so hard to teach our kids about tech they maybe have never used and send emails asking for patience and help, or greeting neighbors from across the street that we might have simply walked by in the past – in a strange way being apart has broken down those walls and appreciate the humanity in others.
And “things” don’t seem to mean so much anymore. Having a few good things are all we really need. Younger generations were already ahead of us with this realization. My kids would rather have a few nice things and spend money instead on a nice vacation together or go to show or a football game together. My college-age daughter had decided, rather than using her money to buy new spring clothes or go party on Spring Break, she had planned before all this to use that money to spend the week with her grandmother in her Florida assisted living home. She didn’t want more stuff. She wanted more time.
I think we old folks are starting to catch up with this idea. Less stuff, more time. Time to do the things that matter with the people that matter – our families and our communities. My great hope is that this whole experience will not go to waste on us. I think that as we will come out of this seeing the value of togetherness and not the value of things. I think this, along with planning for the next generation, will have us rethinking the way we live and the homes we create for the future. And we will be better for it.