I don't think I can pinpoint the exact moment when I started thinking I was becoming old enough to die but I did consciously come to that realization recently when shopping for a lightweight rain jacket. Normally I would be motivated by a combination of function, style, and price but sometime during the past couple of years I started buying mostly better quality items, not because I'm big into quality but because I've started purchasing items with the thought that "...if I buy a good quality rain jacket, it should last me the rest of my life". Even though my wife TA was mortified when I first verbalized my shopping thought process, I was not stating it to be in any way morbid and certainly not as something I was looking forward to. I'm just a realist. We all reach a point in our lives where the amount of time we have before us is less then the amount of time we have behind us and that's just the way it is.
With this in mind, I've simply adjusted my buying habits to fit my place in life. As I wear a pair of black dress shoes maybe three times a year and I figure I can get a solid 100 wearings from a quality pair, by my math a really nice shoe should take me well into my 80's. After that, if I'm still around, fuck it, I'm wearing sneakers to every event. If I were to buy a middle-of-the-road pair, it might last me only until my mid 70's and then I'd be facing a dilemma: am I old enough to get away with being the crazy old guy who wears sneakers everywhere? Or do I have to go out and buy another pair that will take me way past the age where I should really give a shit?
It's not all about spending big bucks on quality items because they're going to last the rest of my life. There's also the money saving side of this thought process of mine - there's no way in hell that I'm spending $40 on a super nice hammer or $30,000 on a metal roof that will last 50 years. See, it's not about just buying quality items that will last the 35 years that the actuary tables say I have left. It's also about making smart purchases to free up cash for other, more frivolous, things. I'm not building anything any more so a $15 hammer is fine for the few nails I have left to bang in my life (somehow that sounds dirty) and I can therefore parlay these savings into something that I would have once considered wasteful, like a tasting menu at a fine restaurant.
So there you have it, purchasing things that will last the rest of your life. It's not all macabre and sad, at least not yet. I'm still thinking in terms of 30ish years. It's not like all I'm buying is the shittyest stuff I can find because I think I'll only use them once and then drop dead (that's when it really WILL become sad). See TA? Lighten up, I'm not planning on going anywhere anytime soon. I'm still thinking about many years of us enjoying the good things in life together, it's just that a $40 hammer is not one of those things but... a $300 tasting menu with wine pairing is. How does next Saturday night sound?
