Discovery delight

When I was a kid, my family counted the months of summer by a succession of u-pick outings. One after another, strawberries, blueberries, peaches, and apples became pies, preserves, sauce, and frozen berries.

These days, the seasonality of fruit barely registers. I use cupfuls of frozen blueberries without having heard a single berry plink into a coffee can tied to my waist. I buy tasteless strawberries without squatting in a strawberry field for hours. Once in a while, I buy a few peaches, and the last time I picked an apple was on my ten-year-old's preschool fieldtrip.

When everything is always available a dullness sets in. We are stultified by the severing of effort and pleasure.

I find an antidote in thrifting. Where everything is already discounted, already unpredictable, I add the constraint of shopping only for the on-sale tag color. I love the particular challenge of finding something amazing on Goodwill's $1.99 Monday. I love telling fellow thrifters that Value Village changes their half-price tag color on Wednesdays.

I want to be challenged. Friction, chosen on purpose.

I don't want consumer goods forced down my throat through a tube. I don't want to fatten my liver for a rich man's table. I want to be alive and awake. I want to be the wild goose who knows time and place, flying overhead in formation with my kin.