Today’s focus: anti-materialism (again).
I started with my girlfriend. We were going to meet her friend and her friend’s son, and I had debated with myself what I should wear. I decided on a t-shirt and jeans, because why do I need to prove anything to anyone. She wore shorts and a button-down shirt, also pretty casual. And in fact she asked me if it was OK to be that casual, if I didn’t mind. I told her of course not and that I had thought (if only briefly) about my own clothes, but reminded myself that I love my girlfriend partly because she doesn’t care too much about things like clothes.
Then we walked past a suit shop (one of the many in Cheongdam). I asked her if she would like it if I wore the suit in the window instead. She said it would be very nice sometimes. I agreed, it was a nice suit and I would look great in it.
Beauty can come from materialism. The cathedrals in Europe were paid for through not-so-holy means, and the idea of building a huge, rich, ornately decorated place to worship a God whose son was a carpenter, owned nothing, and encouraged his followers to give everything away is a bit more than ironic. But still, those cathedrals are beautiful. Beauty comes from interesting places.
That night, at the café with my girlfriend and her sister, the subject came up again. She was talking about the spoiled kid who she’s teaching. Her student has so many tutors; her parents have too much money and pay other people to teach and take care of her. When she acts up, she gets new expensive things. And for me the most interesting part of the story is that the mother, despite being the richest of all the parents who JungRim knows, is the one who looks the most scared.
“Only when we lose everything are we free to do anything” is the line from Fight Club I mentioned after our chat. People who have nothing are afraid of things too, but unlike the rich people, afraid of losing their superficial possessions, the poor have to confront their fears, and in doing so usually makes those fears smaller.
I can only guess, since I’ve never really been rich, that being too rich is a kind of addiction. Just like any other addiction, you have to keep feeding it to make up for some deficiency in yourself. Scared rich people should be a contradiction: money should mean stability. Food on the table, a roof over your head for a long time. Survival assured. But when spending money becomes a reaction to some outside influences you can’t cope with, it becomes an addiction. If you don’t know how to make your daughter feel better, spend some money on her. If you don’t know what other people think of you, buy some expensive clothes or a nice car to impress them. If you don’t know how to teach your daughter, just get the most expensive schools and tutors. But then there’s a problem. Since you’re letting money take care of the things you should be taking care of, you become even more scared of losing that money. It’s taking care of everything for you, your life is based around it; if it goes away, everything will fall.
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