Life's too short for the red silk dress

The morning of my Christmas lunch saw me in a panic as I gazed at my red silk dress I had planned to wear (and look effortlessly fantastic in). There, right on the front, in the middle of the stomach area, was a stain! I immediately doused said mark with water in an attempt to remove, only making the problem worse by ending up with a new, even more noticable watermark, which surrounded the stain like a target highlighting a bullseye. With no alternative option prepared I had to improvise, so, my Christmas vest (a brightly sequinned little number) that only comes out Christmas eve, was used to cover the whole torso area, target, stain & all. All day I shone like a giant christmas ornament, not quite the elegant & effortless look I'd hoped for.
Later reading another blog, about another special dress that had a mishap & was then relegated to the "home" wear pile, I wondered about how many well loved clothes out there have had short lived wear due to a drop or two of red wine, a deliciously saucy spaghetti bolognese, sticky drops of mango nectar, or an errant run away baby beet.
I've become a little less ruthless with these pieces, now recycling them as gardening outfits, but a designer red bias cut silk dress, I can't see it living up to the strains a mornings gardening would demand of it.
As I dwell on it's future, I wonder, why is it we don't celebrate these little marks, why we don't see it not as an ending for a fabulous dress, but as a celebration of occassion. Lets embrace the stains in our lives. Each stain could tell of a life enjoyed & experienced in it's fullness, moments to treasure or even to be envious of, rather than embarassed about. Just imagine how much more we'd wear that outfit we keep for special, and when wearing it, how much less we'd worry about those prospective little accidents, how we would order crab and crack it with enthusiasm, how we'd clink glasses with cheers, and play on the grass with the children. Life could come back to living beautifully if only we could live with our little stains.