The Pursuit of Comfort Feels like a Marathon

The Pursuit of Comfort Feels like a Marathon - A Short Personal Essay

A luxurious lifestyle that involves expensive cars or a top floor apartment in a shiny new high-rise has never appealed to me. In fact, I have generally not fantasised about more than being able to have a comfortable space for myself and my potential cat. I know that I will have to work for it but that does not bother me.  In a perfect world, my post-university lifestyle would consist of working at my idea of an agreeable job, earning enough money to sustain myself and having enough time for my personal activities.

At a time when the cost of living in the U.K. is rising yet, the perceived standard of living remains stagnant, my dream is starting to feel unattainable. The idea of financial comfort is becoming more and more unrealistic for people like me. After spending the last decade making the choices that would dictate major aspects of my future, I am now faced with the reality that if the cost of living is already too high for people who work full time jobs, I may not even stand a chance. NI tax, energy bills and council tax were recently increased, but minimum wage has not increased enough to support these salary deductions.

Of course, I am coming from a point of privilege. I have had the privilege of attending university in London which has meant being able to indulge in aspects of life that my peers across the country have not. Funded partially by Student Finance England and the Bank of Mom and Dad.

I am privileged enough to complain about my Amazon Prime and Spotify subscriptions because I have no real financial responsibilities to fulfil. But I must still deal with the issue of deciding what to do with my career once I graduate in order to continue to afford my lifestyle.

While my peers and I are plagued with uncertain futures, it is easy to feel hopeless with a government that does not have the self-awareness to see what is going on around it. Or maybe it is simple ignorance.

Whenever we see movie characters like Tony Stark and Bruce Wayne whose parents were billionaires which set them up for lives of objective ease, we vilify them. Partially out of jealousy, and partially because of their lack of care for the rest of society. What if that is our government? What if that is our Prime Minister? What does that mean for us?

Should I take on a billionaire’s mindset and build an empire which will almost certainly require the exploitation of other people and their hard work? Maybe I should just start at an extremely junior position and hopefully with a lot of hard work I can make my way to the top of some already existing corporation. Better yet, I could run away from my responsibilities here, to a faraway tropical island to live as a banana farmer, finally getting to soak in the vitamin D of which my body has been deprived after all these years in the northern hemisphere.

Unsurprisingly, those plans are not very realistic and even if I could successfully carry one out, the vast majority of people will not be able to do the same. The idea of achieving monetary success without my peers alongside me is not appealing.
I even choose not to factor in my knowledge that appearance, race, religion, sexual orientation and level of education will also have an effect on my financial prospects. Because at that point, hope begins to become extremely scarce.

The average Londoner my age will not be able to buy a home for at least fifteen years. My predicament is different because I am not even a Londoner. I am currently a temporary addition to the city for the duration of my time at university. If I had known that moving here would mean forming an attachment to a city that I might be forced out of when the time comes, I might have just remained in Leicester.

Unfortunately, there is not much of a positive spin for me to put on this situation. In fact, I fear that if I say too much my dear readers will start to lose their own sense of hope for the future. Thankfully, not everyone is like me. I see that my friends and family somehow manage to stay motivated and that sometimes motivates me to move forward.

A phrase that has stuck with me since my childhood is “just keep swimming”. I heard it in finding Nemo and since then it has replayed itself in my mind whenever I start to veer into existentialism. I am often reminded to take in what can feel like very simple and mundane aspects of life. While it is not a solution to our issues it is a distraction and I feel like that is all we can do on an individual level.

It sounds obvious to enjoy every enjoyable moment in life but it is harder than it sounds. As I write this, I am sitting on a wall in the gardens around St Paul’s cathedral. It is eighteen degrees Celsius and the sun is slowly burning my exposed legs. In the moment that I took to take in my surroundings I forgot the subject of this piece entirely. Thus, proving to myself that ignorance truly is bliss. Maybe it is time to lean into my delusions and ignore what does not please me.

Life is too short to spend unnecessary time worrying about the fact that I may never truly achieve optimum satisfaction. YOLO, right? If I make an active effort to be content now, there is no need to chase a feeling that is already present.

K. Iruwa