Living The Lifestyle
I feel so weird to be nearly 28 and in 'limbo', so to speak. My friends are all thriving in their careers or at least have an idea of where they're headed & where they'd like to be. They've already bought cars and are now buying condos or apartments.
Me? I wouldn't have my car if not for Daddy. Don't even talk about owning real estate.
Every time I go for a housewarming party, I feel a pang coz I think I may never be able to afford a home of my own. Not if I carry on at the same rate I've been going, anyway. And then I look at my scratched car that breaks down every so often, and know I can't afford to get it repainted, let alone buy a new one.
What am I doing with my life?!?
I am normal enough to want to sleep in a cool air-conditioned bedroom and drive a nice new Japanese-brand car that won't break down every three months and be able to afford holidays overseas perhaps once every two years. Welcome to The Lifestyle of middle-class suburbia.
The lure of The Lifestyle is strong. It isn't that I can't live without all these things, but it would be nice to have them, y'know? And while everybody is I know is making progress in achieving The Lifestyle, I am... sort of stuck half-way there, which is aggravating.
I wonder if it is possible to live in The City and not succumb to The Lifestyle. I'm sure it is possible, but it must be the result of a conscious decision, or it'll never happen. So much easier to get swept up in the current. I believe most families take for granted the fact that their bedrooms and living rooms should be set up with air-cond units, they should subscribe to Astro (satelite TV network), they should own at least two cars (one for each spouse), they should hire a maid to help with the children and the housework, and should need to rely on a double income in order to manage.
Singles, like me, tend to take for granted the fact that we can afford to spend fifty bucks on a meal (Chilli's, TGI Friday's, Modesto's, etc.), ten bucks on a cup of coffee (Starbucks and Coffee Bean), two hundred or more on a pair of Levi's jeans or a pair of Reeboks, hold a gym membership, subscribe to a credit card or two, own a car that gets us from A to B, a notebook computer, a digital camera, and perhaps a PDA and an iPod. Okay, not everybody lives like this. But to a certain extent, I do, and I know a good number of my peers in The City do, too.
I find myself challenged to live a different life and embrace a different lifestyle. At the same time, I don't want to. Nobody in their right minds would choose a less luxurious or less comfortable life. (I'm not saying 'spartan', mind you. I'm no ascetic.) Hey, a notebook computer is one of the things on my wishlist. Then I could sit in Starbucks and blog in air-conditioned luxury. Why not?? *grin*
Mom & Dad have always advocated living simply. Living simply? What is that? I've never been able to live simply. Why do you think Dad told me I have too many boats?
Personally, I see living simply as the wiser, more disciplined choice and The Lifestyle as the more self-indulgent, frivolous choice. Having lived most of my life indulging myself materially and failing at most attempts to practice self-denial & delayed gratification, living simply has a weird kind of attraction for me. I suppose it is sort of like my personal Holy Grail (is that sacrilegious?). Maybe I am a closet ascetic after all.
I also have this weird kind of dread that I might get too comfortable in my middle-class suburbia life and become so used to being surrounded with people who are like me, mixing with people who are like me, relating to people who are like me, that I end up losing my sense of reality. Does this make any sense? It's almost like we're all becoming clones of each other and nobody even thinks of doing anything differently anymore because this is the way to live. I find that so scary.
When I look at the people who sit around me in church, who sit around me in the Starbucks outlets and walk around me in the shopping malls, it's almost like we're living in our own little cocoon, separated from the "real world" where people sweat and labour and are grimy and suffer. Well, of course we suffer too, but it's an entirely different kind of suffering, wouldn't you say?
Ours is a more sanitised world, an insulated one, a cushioned and protected one. I say this because I look at pictures of starving, malnourished children and wince and exclaim, "Poor things," then look away because I don't want that reminder of a harsher, dirtier, uglier world out there. And it's so easy to forget. Too easy. Because all the time I'm getting tugged further and further into the seductive shininess of The Lifestyle. Will I choose to wrench myself away? I don't really know.