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About This Author
My name is Joy, and I love to write.
Why poetry, here? Because poetry uplifts its writer, and if she is lucky enough, her readers, too. Around us, so many objects abound to write about. Once a poet starts with a smallest, most trivial object, he shall discover that his pen will spill out what is most delicate or most majestic hidden inside him. Since the classics sometimes dealt with lofty subjects with a lofty language, a person with poetry in his soul may incline to emulate that. That is understandable. Poetry does that to a person: it enlarges the soul and gives it wings. Yet, to really soar, a poet needs to take off from the ground.
 
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Daily Cascade #1106279 added January 18, 2026 at 6:38pm
Restrictions: None
Necessary or Unnecessary?
Prompt: Necessary or Unnecessary?
“We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities.”
Oscar Wilde
What’s something you love today that you never even knew you needed in your life?
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The line between what I truly need and what I like is so blurred. What was once optional now feels indispensable to me. This is such an irony, isn't it! Mostly, today, some things just soothe my life, and not because they are indispensable, either.
Let me go back a few decades, since I am such an oldie. In my youth, only the government, Nasa, and such had computers, and we had black-and-white console TV's. Yes, those were the dark ages, for being colorless. Yet, we had other good stuff, but that stuff is not something I am going to address in this entry, today.
On those earlier times, we thought we hit the jackpot, When, before the computers, arrived the DVRs.
Our first DVR in 1968 cost over a thousand dollars and it was a huge and heavy prototype. I can't recall the make of it, but my husband got it from a salesman who visited him in his office and told him this offer was only open to some professionals like him. Sales shtick? Who knows. But my hubby bit, and brought the darn thing home, which kept my older son, a baby at the time, occupied with the reruns of the earliest forms of Sesame Street. This made me realize at that time that there could be something to this techno whatever revolution. which was taking its first baby steps, at the same time with my kids. Well,since then, we've come a long way, baby, haven't we!
One thing I've noticed over the years is that what the younger generation of any era considered a commonplace convenience, the older generation before them applauded it as independence. Yet, in their earliest beginnings, things may proceed rather slowly.
Then, fast forward it to our day when things have changed so much. Today, we--the older generation--are at a loss with today's technologies, and especially the ai based workings in companies.
At first, I used to blame ai, with all my bad experiences with the banks, companies, online sites, etc. Then, I thought, later, ai is not to blame for our generation's flailing, but the companies themselves are, by falling behind each update and upgrade.
At this time, I've changed my mind again. Now, I also realize, the constant changes and improvements bombarding the companies and businesses in lightning speed should be blamed much more.
On the other hand, blaming will do no one any good, and things are what they are, as fast as they are coming down at and upon us. Also, some of this new technology is allowing us, the elderly, to live without constant help.
Plus, with my eyesight problems, I have really been enjoying the pads, audiobooks, streaming, and cellphones. Yes, especially the cellphones because I can video-conference or visit my family and friends who are now scattered all over the world.
In this sense, which had been "unnecessary” way back when, now answer very real human needs that were once met by larger families, closer communities, or slower lives.
Just maybe, in essence, this quote reminds me that necessity isn't a fixed thing, but it is something greatly affected by fear, curiosity, convenience, and care. Today's necessary objects may also be the obsolete ones, tomorrow, but for the time being, they are holding my life together. 
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