String of Hope
Whenever I get asked what I am saving up for, I usually just say “stuff.”
No, I almost don’t tell anyone I allocate a relatively small portion of my weekly budget to concert funds, a rare photocard of my bias, or my favorite group’s official light stick.
In reality, there is really no physical force holding me back from blurting it all out; no, my hands are not bound in chains. But perhaps society is an entity that is large enough to do the job.
In this economy where almost every existing structure feeds the capitalist system, it feels illegal to spend money on bigger things from time to time — even if it isn’t actually illegitimate and shouldn’t make me feel this way.
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Yet knowing how easy it is for an individual with a sort of moralizing “wokeness” to police the purchases you make and immediately equate them to toxic consumerism, you tend to give up before you even try. It is as if telling someone with an Apple device or two that they have only been feigning their financial woes all this time — as if speaking right into their face that they need not be presentable to be canonically struggling.
The thing is, what seems like a trifling matter to one could be another’s last string of hope.
Article by Shaniah Marie Atienza
