Minimum Daily Requirements

Ever look at a box of Total with it’s 100% of 11 essential vitamins and minerals? Makes you feel like you’re eating the healthiest food in the world. Wow, look at the minerals! And all those vitamins! But it’s deceptive.

They’re talking about minimums—i.e. what you need to stay alive. But what if you want to thrive in abundant, overflowing good health? The minimum is not going to cut it. It’s easy to fall into a “minimum requirements” mode where the minimum is all you come to expect. Or, worse, you start to feel that’s all you deserve.

We accept minimums about a lot of things—the things we buy, not because they’re lovely, but because they’re on sale. The jobs we take just for the paycheck, not the creativity they inspire. Settling for Mr. He’s Alright instead of holding out for Mr. He-Treats-Me-Like-Gold. We accept the minimum as if that’s all we are worth or as if that’s the limit of our dreams.

That’s how I found myself in the Habitat for Humanity Re-Store, looking at other people’s dusty, cast-off chandeliers in hopes of finding one under $75 for my dining room.

Meanwhile, I know exactly what I REALLY want. What I REALLY want is the capiz-shell pendant light by that I saw in my favorite shelter magazine. It's simple, subtle, gorgeous. And it's $2550. Mm-hmm, two thousand, five hundred and fifty dollars. Don’t know about you, but for me that’s a mortgage payment. Actually, it’s two. Not exactly in my budget… but that shouldn’t stop me from feeling like I deserve something that beautiful.

The price of my chandelier isn't the point. It’s about feeling free to say what I want and feeling that I deserve what I want—even if realism and practicality tell me it’s beyond my grasp. (And even as I remind myself that many people live without electricity, much less a light fixture of any kind, and they deserve beautiful things as well.) I don’t want to get in the habit of thinking only in terms of the lowest common denominator. It’s one thing to make peace with the fact that a $2000 home accessory is not the wisest way to bend your budget. It’s another to forget that you are worthy of things that are fresh and beautiful and awe-inspiring and affirming. Compromises have to be made. But standards can be held.

I think I’d almost forgotten. And it wasn’t until I reminded myself—and allowed myself to go boldly into my local lighting boutique and monopolize nearly an hour of the lighting designer’s time looking at all the chandeliers I loved (cost be damned), that I was able go back to Habitat and buy a $50 fixture that pleases me. It is identical to one the lighting designer showed me at ten times the cost. Hey, I deserve nice things and I have expensive tastes, but I’m no fool. And I’m still keeping a picture of that pretty capiz-shell number in my wish book.


P.S. I adore Habitat for Humanity. Love what they stand for; love what they do. I've donated to them every month for more than a 10 years now—and that's not counting the amount of money I've spent buying great stuff in their Re-Stores.