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SPEEDBOATS, SPORTS CARS, PRIVATE JETS

 


It is normal to assume that those who own the planes and the fancy cars, the penthouses and the yachts must be the confident ones among us. What solid and self-congratulatory types must be at the wheel of those Italian saloons and in the leather armchairs of those Gulfstream G700s. But ownership of luxuries can mask something more complicated and, from certain angles, more poignant. It would seldom occur to anyone to seek so urgently to impress the world unless they had not first been afflicted by a stubborn sense of being superfluous and invisible. We may be tempted to read Ferraris and Riva speedboats as signs of wealth, but they could with greater accuracy be interpreted as symbols of a background impression of invisibility and sorrow. They are evidence of deprivation. How poor one would need to feel in order to make all the sacrifices required to accumulate a fortune; how humiliated one must at some point have been in order to demand preternatural respect and obedience from everyone in one’s path. It is an achievement of sorts for parents to give their children the means by which they can go on to build up a fortune. It is an even greater achievement to imbue them with such an innate sense of significance and worth that they are liberated from having to spend the greater part of their adult lives in search of status. True privilege involves transcending the craving for wealth; true luxury means being unbothered by simplicity. There are of course ways of going without that are entwined with resentment and shame, but these should not obscure instances of genuine disinterest in the accoutrements of power; examples of people who are sufficiently at ease with themselves to ride a bike, paddle a canoe or live in a cottage. If envy were more correctly ascribed, these would be the proper targets of our aspiration and respect. These are the genuinely confident ones among us.

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