"Sit and be still
until in the time
of no rain you hear
beneath the dry wind’s
commotion in the trees
the sound of flowing
water among the rocks,
a stream unheard before,
and you are where
breathing is prayer."

Wendell Berry, from “Sabbaths 2001”

People involved in industry, design, environmentalism, and related fields often refer to a product's "life cycle". Of course, very few products are actually living, but in a sense we project our vitality-- and our mortality-- onto them. They are something like family members to us. We want them to live with us, to belong to us. In Western society, people have graves, and so do products. We enjoy the idea of ourselves as powerful, unique individuals; and we like to buy things that are brand-new, made of materials that are "virgin". Opening a new product is a kind of metaphorical defloration: "This virgin product is mine, for the very first time. When I am finished with it (special, unique person that I am), everyone is. It is history." Industries design and plan according to this mind-set.
We recognize and understand the value of feeling special, even unique. But with materials, it makes sense to celebrates the sameness and commonality that permit us to enjoy them-- in special, even unique, products-- more than once. What would have happened, we sometimes wonder, if the Industrial Revolution had taken place in societies that emphasize the community over the individual, and where people believed not in a cradle-to-grave life cycle but in reincarnation?

Every man is followed by a shadow which is his death- dark, featureless, and mute. And for every man there is a place where his shadow is clarified and is made his reflection, where his face is mirrored in the ground...He becomes the follower of what pursued him. What hounded his track becomes his companion.
That is the myth of my search and my return.

- Wendell Berry