Am I rich, or am I poor?
I like going to high end shopping malls. Not necessarily to shop, but to look at all the shiny stuff, maybe get an overpriced coffee and feel like part of the jet set for a little while. Today I was strolling around just such a mall, and I got to thinking about our conceptions of who is rich and who is poor, and if there is something in the middle.
When I was younger, most of the stuff in these malls was completely unaffordable for me. But that was ok, because I didn’t want those things anyway. I spent my money on import Babylon 5 VHS tapes, Burger King, movie tickets and 5€ t-shirts. My tastes haven’t changed all that much, most of the money I don’t spend on fun things like rent, groceries and outrageous dentist bills still goes to buying books, movies and music, and on the occasional trip to another city where I mostly find bookshops and buy more books.
But as I get older, I find myself starting to appreciate certain finely crafted, expensive items, clothes, shoes, things like that. As I walk around the shopping mall I see in the shop windows things I actually would buy. More than that, I could afford to buy them. Which makes me think, am I rich? Do I belong in this place?
No, I don’t. Because the people who belong here don’t buy one or two high end items a year. They walk into these shops and just buy whatever they find pretty. They probably don’t even look at the price. Or, if they do, they look at it with a completely different eye. For a really rich person, that designer t-shirt that costs 200€ is probably in the same range as a t-shirt that costs 25€ for me: not super cheap, but not very expensive either. Normal.
Still, I can’t help feeling a curious mixture of guilt and satisfaction. Satisfaction because, even though I don’t rightly belong here, I could pretend to. I could walk into one of these shops, get out my credit card, and pay for that 200€ t-shirt. So many people couldn’t even think of that — to them, I’m filthy rich. (This would be the guilt part.) To the really rich people who shop here regularly (this is probably even one of the rattier places for them), I am really quite poor. And so I wander around for a while more, wondering about these strange circumstances we impose upon ourselves.
After the mall, I went to the dentist and paid those 200€ for a painful and disagreeable procedure. Who needs a pricey t-shirt when I can dazzle them with my smile?
