Necessity and Luxury

Someone once asked me “What used to be a necessity that is now a luxury?” Some variations of this question make the rounds, such as “What used to be normal that is now a luxury?” And they get many responses, like wooden furniture, kids playing outside unsupervised, fixing your own car, etc. That’s not exactly the same question. These were indeed normal, but were they necessary?

In response to “What used to be a necessity that is now a luxury?” I can think of only one compelling response: Being off the grid.

If you are old enough to predate the digital generations, you remember how a road trip took you out of contact with everyone. Or that you needed to arrange time and place to meet in advance rather than coordinate by phone or text on the go. Or that you had to weigh the cost of the phone call against its importance. It wasn’t at all unusual to be entirely out of touch for multiple days at a time. Now you need to work at it. Now you need to arrange to go off the grid, rather than get on it.

And expectations have changed along with the connectivity. People expect to reach you by one means or another at any time. Going off the grid violates this new norm. What an amusingly topsy-turvy world we inhabit.