I was doing my laundry this morning when I noticed that one of my t-shirts came out with a spot on it, right in the middle of the chest area. So, evaluating my choices:
1. I can try to remove the stain
2. I can throw/give the shirt away
3. I can keep it and wear it to clean the house, paint, anywhere people won’t see me in it.
4. I can wear it out in public and act like the stain isn’t there or that it doesn’t matter.
The more I started thinking about this, the more I wondered: Why is number 4 so bad? Why do we care so much that a t-shirt has a stain on it? If this were a dress shirt or a nice suit, ok. The whole point of dressing up is to rise to whatever occasion one needs to. But in everyday life, a trip to the store or a casual restaurant? Why do we care so much? Does it say something about our personal hygiene if we wear a clean shirt that happens to have a stain on it? Is it our obsession with the new and fear of decay that makes us turn away from a stained garment? And do the massive changes in our culture, moving as it has from the formal to the mostly casual not changed our appreciation of such things? If a shirt is in perfectly good condition, has not lost its shape, has no rips or tears why will we not wear it? I suspect that it reminds us of imperfection and the messiness of life, things we strive to avoid confronting. Or at least to avoid showing.
Metaphysical musings aside, throw the damn thing away.