In Nepal, on a day-long local religious pilgrimage with some of my fellow Peace Corps Trainees, I had one of my favorite conversations in recent memory.
As young people often do, my friends and I were railing on about the unfairness of the world.
One of my friends (who had grown up in Las Vegas) mentioned how angry it made him that someone with tons of money could spend a hundred grand on champagne in a single night out and how dramatically unfair that is.
I stopped in my tracks, perplexed. “Wait,” I said, “Do you want to spend 100 grand on champagne?”
He paused. “Well… No,” he replied.
To outline how silly this conversation was against the backdrop of our experience, at the time, we were being given a stipend of roughly USD300 a month, showering with either freezing water or a bucket of the same cold water mixed with a tea kettle full of boiling water to bring it up to a lovely above-room-temperature balminess. No matter how warm the water became, it would end up frigid in our host families’ uninsulated concrete houses.
And we were thoroughly enjoying ourselves. We had chosen this, and it was worth it for a life of service. At this point in our journey, luxury was a hot shower. That was all it took.
Luxury is a Mindset.
This is the amazing truth about luxury: We are surrounded by it in the rich world. Inundated. We forget that because we have been taught to chase happiness with our wallets.
Now, lest you think I’m advocating for extravagant displays of wealth, allow me to make a broad blanket statement. Anyone who spends $100,000 on champagne is an idiot. If you’ve done this in the past, you are an idiot. Suppose you are reading this and are about to spend $100,000 on champagne; shame on you. I hope the cork blackens your idiot’s eye. There is no justifiable reason to spend $100,000 on champagne, and it is so shameful that you made that choice that you should be tarred and feathered and reminded every day of the shamefulness of your actions. You could have done so much good with $99,900 (after spending an exorbitant $100 on champagne) that didn’t involve champagne at all.
Now, most of us will never have the opportunity to blow $100,000 on champagne. But we ARE surrounded by luxury, which has nothing to do with absurd displays of wealth or marked-up club bar tabs.
The Truth is: Luxury is Anything You Don’t Strictly Need
I don’t need to be able to buy pineapples at any time of year whenever the feeling strikes. Still, I can, thanks to the wonders of globalization and my luxurious capitalist choice-obsessed country.
We are blinded to our own experience of luxury because we constantly see what we don’t have blitzed into our faces and minds, at all hours of the day, on our little dissatisfaction bricks. We are constantly being barraged with ads, showing us how much more absurdly luxurious our lives could be.
My friends, this is a lie. This experience doesn’t stop when you are above a certain wealth line. Even those we perceive to be wealthy are barraged with ads for iterations of stuff that’s just slightly more “luxurious” than the stuff they already have. They’re conditioned to be as discontent as we are. We’ve all been taught to mindlessly spend money to try to catch the beautiful future that is just a little bit out of reach.
One of my favorite strategies for combating dissatisfaction blitz is going out of my way a few minutes a week to search for things that I have no intention of buying. Trust me; it’s awesome. The algorithms don’t know what to do.
Sometimes I click on banner ads that have gotten it wrong, just to mess with the algorithms. Then I see more ads for cat tents, giant stuffed lizards, or other pointless consumer crap.
Do this for a month, and pretty soon, the ads won’t even catch your eye because they are not for you. This is the first step towards a more contented digital life. Hack the algorithms! Revolt!
Now, we’ve got to work on your mindset. I like to start with Kurt Vonnegut’s gratitude exercise. When things are good, say to yourself:
“If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.”
Go out of your way to notice and say something to yourself when you are feeling content. Write these moments down. Gratitude journals may seem hokey, but they work. If you’re cozy with tea under a blanket with rain falling on the roof, take note. Understand that that is a moment of opulent luxury that most human beings would have killed for a hundred years ago.
Remember that all you need in that situation is a thatched roof over a stone cottage. The fact that you live in an insulated house with electricity and running water, where energy is diverted to heating some of that water, is a tremendous luxury.
The mindset of opulence is much more powerful than the pursuit of opulence.
Cultivating this mindset requires discipline, but once you’re self-aware enough to analyze what makes you happy, it gets easier.
I have bad news. You will never satisfy your desire for luxury and comfort. That’s not how the human mind works. To begin with, we are dissatisfied creatures, and then on top of that, a desire to consume has been instilled in you by advertising since you first saw a television.
Happiness in our society is a finish line that’s continually being moved just out of reach by large corporations. You’ll never get there in the rat race, chasing what everyone else is chasing. The good news is that you can stop trying and immediately enjoy a happier life.
Think of your brain’s pursuit of luxury and comfort as a blob of consumption sitting on a throne, demanding that you feed it grapes. Can you see that hunk of sweaty consumerism saying “thank you, that’s enough grapes” without being prompted? No! it is your responsibility to save your life from the pursuit of comfort and start seeing the luxury surrounding you.
How to Live a More Luxurious Life