Luxury

"The state of great comfort and extravagant living." This is how luxury is defined. And this is how I would have wanted to live the rest of my life if I had it all my way. I mean, come on! Who wouldn't want to live in physical and material comfort and abundance in a world that entices us to get all that we can get out of it.

At one point in my life I had desired to live the ultimate luxuriant life: have a high-paying, white collar job; live in an expensive mansion with acres and acres of nature surrounding it; have a pool and my own home theater inside the house; travel the world on a regular basis. This would then signify to me and to others that "I have made it"!

At another point in my life I tried to live a semi-luxurious kind of life by buying fancy clothes at full price, getting stylish shoes, dining at nice restaurants, collecting music and movie CDs and feeling like a connoisseur while doing so. It felt like I was trending with the Joneses way before the word trending even trended. I felt cool and significant. I suppose that's what luxury does.

At this point in my life, however, I've come to realize that while some luxuries may have some place at certain times in our lives, it shouldn't become the be-all and end-all of our human existence. Material wealth and worldly riches are all but fleeting, after all.

As a follower of Jesus (and from four decades of life experiences), I know full well the profitability of living with this question in mind: "What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?" 

Human beings can certainly set their sights on a life of luxury, pursue it, and even get their two hands on it. This is especially true for those who have the determination to rise above the ranks of their economic position; but even more so for those who have been born into opulence as they can afford to live the lifestyle of the rich and famous littered with grand mansions, fancy cars, expensive clothes, eye-popping jewelry, and trips around the world! They are the ones that have fat stacks of Benjamins (or Aquinos) in their Gucci or Girbaud wallets. They are the ones endued with trust funds that'll keep them financially afloat and living the life of comfort and extravagance even when economies are slowly sinking. They are the ones who has more than they'll ever really need.

However, for those of us who were brought into this world with dust in our fingernails, debts to our names, and/or a preset for a life of living hand to mouth, a lavish lifestyle might be something we have to eschew. Or at least the unnecessary forms of it. Insisting on luxurious living when we don't have the capacity for it just might lead us to lose sight of what's important in pursuit of what is temporal.

We're no strangers to stories of people saying they have lost and/or sold their souls in exchange for gaining worldly wealth and living a super luxuriant life. Is that really a fair trade: to gain the comfort of an extravagant life yet lose the very essence of one's existence? Some might say 'yes'. Others maybe 'no'. What good is it for someone to live so extravagantly in this life, if they are just going to miss the opulence of eternity in the next?

A life of luxury may make us feel momentarily sated, economically updated, and socially celebrated; but in reality, it actually leave us inebriated, spiritually outdated, and morally dilapidated.