Ambition.
Sometimes I think I’m ideologically incompatible with the US. Many people here want to be millionaires, have the biggest houses, biggest cars and so on. I don’t. Never have, really.
My ambition is different. It’s about comfort, rather than “bigger, better, faster, more”. And my preferred route to this level of comfort is that I want to get good enough at something where I can earn a comfortable wage for only two days’ work a week. Time is far more valuable to me than money. There’s no point working every hour your particular choice of deity sends in order to earn every possible currency unit you can, if you’ve got no time to enjoy it.
Of course, being a child of the First World, I can be materialistic, but I want “nice” things, not necessarily big or expensive things. My ideal house is a modest three-bedroom brick house with a two-car driveway and a tiled roof - a far cry from some of the gargantuan clapboard monstrosities I see here. What’s the point? Houses like that have rooms you might walk into twice a year. And, thanks to cheap construction, will probably blow down in a bad storm. (I suspect many of these McMansionites have never heard the story of the Three Little Pigs).
My dream car is something small with four-wheel-drive - the current Subaru Impreza hatch fits the bill. I want a normal-sized, but nice TV. That’s pretty much where I’m coming from. I’m happy to travel by train, stay in hotels instead of having a holiday home, and have no interest in brand names or labels (unless it’s Apple - my one indulgence).
Better? No. But definitely different.
