Wednesday, March 04, 2009

We are getting a new car today. Well, new to us - it is a 2005. Our old car was a 1995; we keep our cars for a long time. I'm not much or a car person (don't even drive) and neither is Bob, so we are not all that excited. Yesterday in class I lectured on philosophy of education; one of the areas we discuss is the division between materialists and idealists in metaphysics. I think of myself more as an idealist, but I confess that I felt a little sad as I watched Bob drive away this morning. I don't think the sentiment comes from fear of change, as some might suspect. I guess I invest material things with some sort of spirituality. My "things" are important to me, not as status symbols, but as memories of the past.

Speaking of change, last week Verizon offered to upgrade my DSL to something faster (although I don't think it is FIOS yet) and it happened on Monday. That led to me having to spend time reconfiguring, but I managed to get everything working again after a few hours. Today a technician is here replacing the wires outside the house. I didn't feel sad to get a new router! I guess cars are different.

1 comment:

Sya said...

I don't think of myself as being very materialistic either. Maybe this stems for moving around a lot and being annoyed with junk I have to get rid of. If I was forced to replace everything I owned, I wouldn't feel too beat up about it, except for the inconvenience of being forced to replace stuff. Although I do understand why people attach sentimental value to things. Unlike words and photographs, they're tangible triggers.