Sometimes the most difficult thing about accepting truth is that it comes at the expense of some of our favorite prejudices. A prejudice I once held was that anything that was broken could be fixed. Though I still believe that broken things can be fixed, the truth is that some things that are broken are not worth fixing. I have written about my mom holding onto a broken coffee maker just in case someone in the family would rather fix a ten-year-old coffee machine than spend $20 for a new one. It became garbage on the day it quit working, and it was thrown away after mom held onto it for fifteen years.
The more we value something, the more broken it must be for us to get rid of it. The truth is that some things that are broken are not worth fixing. The coffee maker isn't worth fixing if it quits working. The line for a car or a house goes far beyond the line for the coffee maker, and the line for a house we own goes beyond the line for the car. All of them offer the greatest value assets can have for a coffee drinking, daily commuting homeowner, which is utility value. However, the coffee maker is more easily replaced than the car, which, in turn, is more easily replaced than the house.
