"Luxury isn't just a question of expensive and beautiful things—it feeds into ideas about democracy, patriotism, social harmony, our values and our relationships with our divine." -Dr. Michael Scott.
Take a look around you. Is the phone you’re using just a mere need or a part of your luxurious living? Is your luxury condo unit in Manila a necessity or a desire? Are you still looking at “luxury” as a bonus to yourself, or are you living behind its shadow? Are you pushing your limitations to gain luxury? Do you already consider such things as part of your “needs”, and not just mere “wants”? How do you differentiate the things you need from the things you want?
Every individual has his/her own needs and desires. According to Abraham Maslow (1943), people are motivated to achieve certain needs, needs that continuously grow as one need is fulfilled. An individual still seeks to fulfill the next one and so on. And as people try to achieve certain needs, perspectives about them suddenly changes. How someone looks and values something from the past isn’t as the same today.
Maslow had formulated the “Hierarchy of Needs” and tried to define and understand each level of need every individual has. Hierarchy of Needs consists of five levels of needs which includes: physiological (i.e. food, air, shelter and sleep), safety (i.e. security, law, and authority), love and belongingness (i.e. friendship, family and romantic relationships, intimacy and affection) a higher order of needs as esteem (i.e. achievement, independence, prestige and managerial responsibility), and self-actualization (i.e. realizing personal potential, self-fulfillment, and seeking personal growth). As reflected in the Hierarchy of Needs, the “necessity-luxury” continuum can be discerned. The stage starts from those that are very important for an individual’s basic survival to those that are not essentially necessary. In itself, luxury even etymologically comes from the Latin word “luxus” meaning “excess”. Luxury develops from the unending list of people’s needs in its excess.
Think about it. As time goes by, there comes a thin line between luxury and necessity. However, how an individual looks at it changes his/her values. How would you know that it is being luxurious? With today’s higher standard of living, luxury becomes part of individual’s needs today—apartments are transformed into luxury condos in Manila, phones of call and text purposes becomes android and are now Wi-Fi ready, cars become faster and lighter, and so on. The society has really changed. People’s discontentment matches these innovations. It gave birth to the multi-purpose gadgets, to the luxurious jewelries around an individual’s neck and wrist, and to the high-end buildings and facilities and to everything which that are excesses and that falls down under the increased number of the individual’s desires.
Aiming for better is good if it is not controlling the concerned individual negatively, and if it’s not pushing the individual do things that seem to be right but wrong. Living luxuriously may vary upon individuals’ preferences but innovations also give people the chance to save more time and energy and helps in boosting their self-confidence. It also contributes in building up their self-worth. Luxurious goods aren’t the only standard to acquire personal needs and desires. An individual needs to balance his/her needs with the things he/she also wants to have.
