The Bare Necessities

By Sean McVeigh

Bear with me here …

When they decided to make “The Jungle Book” a movie, why didn’t they rename it to “The Jungle Movie”? As a matter of fact, Kipling released “The Jungle Book” twelve years before Upton Sinclair released his book, “The Jungle.” You’d think that the “book” qualifier would have been reserved for the second one.

While I suppose they’re both on that list of books I’ve always been meaning to get around to (most of which I never will), I’ve never read “The Jungle” or “The Jungle Book” but I have, however, seen both versions of “The Jungle Movie,” er, I mean, “The Jungle Book” movie.

I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that the vast majority of you have also seen one of the movies or are at least slightly familiar with them. You all know Baloo, right? The lovable, carefree bear, who teaches Mowgli the man-cub how to roll with the punches and just enjoy whatever Mother Nature sends your way. Baloo has always been an idol of mine. (From what I gather, the literary version of Baloo is that of a strict teacher of the law for Mowgli and the other young wolves of the pack. How boring is that? Fat chance I move that book to the top of my list anytime soon!) His famous song from the movie, “The Bare Necessities,” talks all about his navigation through the untroubled life. Well, I heard this little philosophical ditty the other day and it got me thinking.

What can’t you live without? The answer to that question has changed quite a bit over the last decade or two. In fact, I think for the majority of human existence, there was a pretty strong consensus on what our bare necessities were. Then in the blink of one generation’s eye, that all went out the window.

When was the last time your phone died? I mean completely dead. A paralyzing fear usually follows closely behind the realization your battery has bottomed out. We are so reliant on that little computer in our pockets that when we forget to charge it overnight or just spend too much time watching Tik Toks and it finally craps out, we crap our pants.

When we finally put our phones away, it’s usually so we can throw on the TV and rot our brains with 10 straight episodes of whatever the show du jour is. “Binge” really is the perfect descriptor for how we watch TV these days. Someone recently told me they missed having to wait each week for a new episode and, in the moment, I agreed with them. Upon preponderance of the evidence, however, I’ve decided I was just being full of it. These days, any show I have to wait for, I usually forget about and only remember a month later when I can binge four episodes in a row … and then get mad when I find out the finale is still another week out.

I’ve decided that a decent hotel room is a good microcosm of what the average person considers the bare necessities of life these days. They used to all have a radio alarm clock and a bible and now they’ve all got whatever charger connection you need for all your devices, streaming services right on the flat screen and a room service menu next to the bed.

Times have changed. Necessities have changed. We’ve all changed. Lord only knows what amenities will be standard issue in hotel rooms 20 years from now.

“That’s why a bear can rest at ease with just the bare necessities of life.”