I suddenly feel like I am a middle-class American. I don't know that I have ever really felt this way before. I have been a lower middle class Hick, a starving college students, a gaijin, a backpack traveler, a haole, a broke American drowning in credit card debt, and a struggling perhaps not very American trying to live within her means. But now, suddenly I have broken through all those barriers and find myself solidly in that coveted--or maybe only historically coveted--category of Middle Class. Why do I feel this way. Well, I am educated. I have a professional job that has pretty good benefits, I am living in an upscale urban living community. I have a TV that now has cable reception and Internet at home. Within the last 24 hours I have bridged the Digital Divide that kept me on the other side. I have a car that doesn't have duct tape on it--yet. The back fender could probably use some but I want to stay in my little cocoon of middle class sensibilities for a few days.
And perhaps what I feel is the most middle class sensibility that I may have developed recently is the feeling that I don't need THINGS as much as I used to need them. Yesterday, I found some flannel pajama bottoms for WOW WHAT A BARGAIN--$7.91 for TWO PAIR. I picked them up, considered them, almost got them but then thought, "But you already have enough pajama bottoms at home." I put them back knowing that old me--struggling me--would have put them into my shopping cart and carried them home feeling I just got a deal--yes, my bank account was short $9 but WOW WHAT A DEAL!! I am so happy. This is the sort of attitude that I think growing up not having enough can breed. Just wanting, wanting all those things that you could have when you were younger, all those things that you had to do without but all your friends had or at least all the cool kids at school had. For a long time, I used to justify purchases by saying that this is what a middle class person has. But that isn't true, I think that a middle class American is mostly that way due to being frugal and smart with their purchases and money. Working hard, spending for quality rather than quantity, and spending for those things that that really improve your quality of living. This quality over quantity is probably the most difficult concept for me to grasp--me, the bargain basement queen. Me, the collector of Last Chance 90% off items. I still have a long way to go.
Some of what is adapting my behavior patterns are Michael Pollan and Barbara Kingsolver's books. I just finished The Omnivore's Delimma and previously read In Defense of Food. Right now I am reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. My current health concerns has brought me around to trying to sort out how I feel about my culture, my upbringing, and my consumption with how I actually are and how I want them to be. I realized that I treated the way I feed myself with the way I bought things--some times with great abandon, and usually trying to get a lot for not very much. End result: waste and unhappiness. By trying to right the way that I think about how I feed myself, I am realizing how interconnected I actually am. How I feel about feeding myself is exactly the same as how I feel about housing myself, clothing myself and entertaining myself. I am coming to realize that it isn't about getting a lot more that you pay for. Rather it is about getting value for what you spend and appreciating what you have. I think that being a Middle Class American is a lost art and I really want to recover it for myself. American's spent the last decade of the first millennium and the first decade of the second, chasing after trappings of upper class consumerism. This got a bunch of us in a lot of trouble--present company included. I doubt I will ever own a Louis Vuitton of luggage and more and more I simply just don't want to. A sturdy set of Samsonite is looking a bit more reasonable and my current mismatched set of red and pink are OK for a while longer.
No comments:
Post a Comment