This Indulgence Must End

Maybe it’s just me. Or maybe it’s just that I go to a private school. Or maybe it’s just America (which probably is the case). But I find my generation extremely indulged.

People around me spend. Spend ravishly. Spend as if they didn’t know what recession means. My best friend—no offense to him—collectively got more than $1500 alone for Christmas. I don’t see the justification in it. Yes, he is the designated valedictorian. Well, I still don’t see the justification in $1500 for no reason. I have been a valedictorian before, and I have gotten nothing physical for it. $1500? Damned if my parents will ever spend that much money on me at a time.

I see justification in having a laptop, a car, an iPod, and a cell phone. That’s about as much justification I can figure for anyone of my age. Two laptops, one of them a 17” MacBook Pro, are not justifiable. Four iPods and an iPhone are not justifiable. A high-end compact camera and an SLR (plus multiple lenses, mind you) are not justifiable.

When I make a purchase that is over $100 or anything electronics, I have to think for an extremely long time, like this laptop I am researching for over four months now.

Whereas, my friends just seemed to find it incomprehensible that I was afraid my dad would not afford a new iPod for me.

My English class had to write a rather personal essay a few weeks ago, and we exchanged it in class and made notes to each other's essay. This guy's essay—he's new—particularly touched me, even though it was obviously written in a massive hurry and had no organization whatsoever (it was in fact the in-class writing exercise done the previous day). He had a paragraph of how scary it was to go to the doctor when he was little. Once, he had endured a visit to the doctor maturely, and his mom brought him to the dollar shop and got $4 worth of toy for him. Ten years later, he recalls the incident nostalgically and appreciates the fact that his mom spend $4 for him out of her not-very-thick wallet.

I was glad to find out not everyone around me was terrifyingly rich.

I feel most enraged when I see that art students don't do anything and have everything that they don't deserve. I feel most comforted by the fact that they will live in financial misery when they are out of college. But then I feel bad again because they will 1)inherit a shitload of money and 2)marry a rich guy, probably.

But then I should be able to spend loads of money while my parents are alive because they declared that my brother and I are not getting any property from them. But my brother is a failure and he probably needs that money.

Being considerate requires misery.

Now there's one more reason for me to be pessimistic.


So this is the story of the Panic of 2009. May I feel like a bitch now?