My little Yugo has finally gone to the auto graveyard, after 103,000 miles of dependable service. True, I had to suffer years of ridicule about the car, but I got good value from it, and it was probably one of the best investments I've made in my life.
But the worth of the car to me was more than just price. I have to admit that I felt grief at seeing it sit in the auto mechanic's yard while I passed him the title and registration to junk it. We had spent a lot of time together. It had listened to my mutterings and mood swings and transported cargo it wasn't built to carry. I realized the strong bond I had with this farrago of bolts, plastic, and fluids as I cleaned it out: books, papers, articles, magazines, coins fished from corners, that Swiss Army knife I thought I'd lost -- I had scattered myself thoroughly throughout the car, and it, in its own way (however cars mold themselves to their owners), had become a daily and necessary part of my life. I had lived with as well as in this car during our four circumnavigations of the globe.
It may seem silly to mourn a car, but the feeling made me see clearly that every time I invite a supposedly "inanimate" object into my life, that object does not, will not, cannot, stay inanimate because from the moment I handle it in some way, I invest with who I am, I "animate" it to become part of my living. Sometimes this animation is purely utilitarian: I have to eat, and a fork will do. No special feeling there, no camaraderie.
But there is a level where what I'll call the "Yugo factor" comes into play. Take that fork, for instance. I can pick it up, use it, clean it, and put it away. But I could also take a moment to read the manufacturer's imprint on the back (usually an Asian country), admire the lines of the handle, note the crookedness or straightness of the tines. Suddenly, what I am doing can only be called friendliness; I am taking an interest, and the moment I do that, that fork moves closer to me by offering me its "thingness" in return for my attention. As the Yugo factor gets stronger, we have flannel shirts we will never throw away, a favorite pair of jeans that are comfort made manifest. In short, we have friends. And in many cases not just friends, but saviors -- without these "things," our lives would indeed be nasty, brutish, and short.
The line between inanimate and animate is not an empirical one but is drawn by how we keep company with the things we call ours. What we need to do is increase the Yugo factor a million-fold so that we make every object on this earth, and the earth itself, a comrade. By honoring things in this way, we honor ourselves, and such honor will allow us to prosper without pillage, enjoy life without eating our seed corn.
(October 1995)