The Death of ‘Luxury’.
Luxury aesthetics are taking the world by storm, and by world i mean the microcosm that is my TikTok For You Page. In the algorithm’s defense, it is simply showing me what I want to see. The video I spent two seconds longer viewing, the trends that I hopped on last season, the girls with their perfectly curated lives. To deny that I am one of the girls with a “perfectly curated life” would be laughable. My offline days are spent grinding, and my online days are spent curating. These days, I fall perfectly somewhere in-between. Craving the peace of being disconnected while simultaneously wanting to be heard.
I find it entirely too difficult a task to maintain a sense of normalcy when I am throwing myself whole-heartedly into a work schedule that defies logic. Sleeping when the sun is up and working when she is quietly tucked away on the other side of the world, all the while missing her rays on my skin and the sound of familiar voices. So, to make up for missed days- I spend my time entangled in the laughter of my girlfriend’s on FaceTime, or a cute luxury boutique fingering the finer items that they stock. I find that the more hours I work, the more money I spend in order to soothe a certain sense of dissatisfaction. At the start of this month, I worked ungodly hours and then immediately felt as if I deserved a ‘treat’. A girl who has never denied herself a treat, feeling the need to treat herself after every inconvenience and accomplishment. The problem with this mentality is essentially enslaving oneself to material possessions. And enslaving yourself to the mentality that is “in order to own, I must work myself to the bone”. I acknowledge the value of hardwork, but I am also deserving of ease and luxury regardless of the amount of time I spend ‘working’.
Luxury has taken on an entirely different meaning for people in the age of social media. The amount of money spent on an item deems wether an item falls into the category of ‘luxury’. Not the quality of the material, the number of hours an artisan spent crafting a product-a misconstrued ideology. But luxury is simply determined by the consumer and no one else, it is up to you to determine what experiences/products you would want to pay a premium for, and what you wouldn’t.
As I have spent more time sitting with myself, true luxury to me is just that:time. I have shifted my focus from buying ‘designer’ to going on International vacations. Spinning my own web of memories, catching laughter as it bubbles from the lips of my loved ones. The luxury of time, to simply do as one pleases is what I crave (as well as the discipline & structure to effectively use my ‘free’ time).
