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Discuss any questions in English. Practise your writing skills.

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paveltashkinov
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#1

Сообщение paveltashkinov »

I am fully aware that I will never buy a yacht, and the sense of global injustice does not gnaw at me. In all likelihood, I’ll never pay a visit to the most sumptuous New York restaurant, but that hardly bothers me either. Likewise, I don’t give two shits that I will be driving a middle-class car surrounded by lots of Ferraris passing me by. I am in no way envious of the people owning luxurious items and business-class goods, even if their riches are widely presumed to have been obtained by some nefarious means.

Ostensibly, it is a matter of fact that the-lap-of-luxury items are not only commonplace, but utterly natural for the rich. The differences in attitudes towards the same ostensibly luxurious experience, like a dinner in an expensive restaurant, of a celebrity and of a mere mortal are bound to be diametrically opposite solely because the mere mortal would perceive the experience as something beyond-the-wildest-dreams, something sacred and therefore unattainable, whereas the celebrity would find the whole experience as a part of his/her routine. Should average people ever make it there, they will be cherishing every moment of it, every crumb and every sip of wine, and will be telling their grandchildren about their experience there. However, the rich very seldom attend such places solely because they are too squeamish to partake from something cheaper; rather, because only there can they find themselves surrounded by the people belonging to the same social strata and enjoying a higher level of quality (although the level of quality per se in no way justifies the price). Thus, nowadays you might be a frequent visitor of a local restaurant next door. Upon becoming rich, you would be able to pick and choose from the best places in your city. Nevertheless, you would view this step upward as a mere improvement of comfort and quality of services rather than something exquisite and important.

Be that as it may, I have an understanding, albeit a rather vague one, what those envious of others’ better comfort must feel like. A sense of loss overwhelms me whenever I think of more or less significant people who I will never be able to talk to owing to the difference brought forth by our strata. Human-like copies are loitering down the streets, the whole difference between them lying in minuscule tints of ‘individuality’. Nevertheless, the unique qualities that have contributed to their fortune and fame are quite distinctive and shining through: knowledge rather than money, experience rather than comfort. All these minutiae would pass me by, just as yachts drift by a coast filled with envious, bleak and greedy eyes.

The only piece of advice worth giving in this case is that it is counterproductive to be envious of something material. Although the covetous people very seldom manage to accumulate wealth, when they succeed, they are invariably bound to end up as the well-known and all-despicable nouveau riches. The material is solely the key to the immaterial, like the access into the loftiest circles, which is the genuine treasure in its own right. The wealth per se is just an additional, albeit pleasurable, appendage that will not drastically change you as a person anyway.
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