You can be entirely aware that your luxuries are luxuries, but still make yourself crazy trying to preserve them
Every month or two, the media offers up a new tale of a sad-looking wealthy couple, explaining how they’re living hand-to-mouth or planning to leave the country for a cheaper life: the spiralling school fees, second home and twice-annual ski trips to St Moritz have simply become too much. This is the journalistic equivalent of lion-feeding time at the zoo, with the unsuspecting couple as hunks of meat. It’s a splendid opportunity for materially fortunate people – like me, and maybe you – to cackle at the un-selfawareness of the extremely fortunate, which feels better than laughing at the poor. But I still feel guilty. Because anyone who knows anything about psychology knows how swiftly we adapt: before we know it, things that were once luxuries have become non-negotiable. Cackle all you like, but there is probably no number of ski trips or holiday homes that can’t start to feel impossible to give up.
And human psychology is even more annoying than that: you can be entirely aware that your luxuries are luxuries, but still make yourself crazy trying to preserve them. In a recent New Yorker essay, the investment manager Gary Sernovitz explained the torment of belonging to Global Services, the highest frequent-flyer category on United Airlines, with perks including first-class upgrades, no security queues and limousine transfer between terminals. He diagnosed himself with “Global Services maintenance anxiety disorder” – a compulsive effort not to lose his status, made worse by United’s refusal to reveal the basis on which it’s awarded. Among the symptoms: otherwise pointless “mileage runs”, flights made solely to gain the favour of the airline gods. Why not just relax and, if you lose your status, so be it? Apparently, that’s not an option.
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from Health & wellbeing | The Guardian http://ift.tt/1WO8qpV
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