I love beautiful things. This is not a secret. I like wonderful hotels. Excellent restaurants. Champagne served in thin glasses. Fresh flowers. Soft sheets. Beautiful clothes. A car arriving exactly when it is supposed to arrive. All of civilization, really, can be measured by whether someone has figured out how to make an experience more comfortable. But here is the problem with luxury: If you start needing it in order to enjoy yourself, you have ruined it. Luxury should be a pleasure. Not life support. I have met people who became so accustomed to expensive things that they seemed incapable of delight. The suite isn’t quite large enough. The restaurant isn’t exclusive enough. The wine isn’t rare enough. The boat is apparently the wrong kind of enormous boat. This seems exhausting. Imagine spending all that money only to become harder to please. What a terrible return on investment. <\/p>\n
I would like the opposite. I want to be able to appreciate the five-star hotel and still become irrationally excited about an excellent cheeseburger. Preferably at an inappropriate hour. Some of the best meals of my life have been elaborate. Some were eaten standing up. Some involved white tablecloths and sommeliers. Some arrived wrapped in paper. The common ingredient was pleasure. I think taste and snobbery get confused. Taste says, “This is wonderful.” Snobbery says, “I am wonderful because I know this is wonderful.” Very different energy. One is appreciation. The other is insecurity wearing loafers. I like people with taste. People who notice craftsmanship. Who can tell when something has been made carefully. A beautiful watch. A perfectly cooked piece of fish. A well-cut jacket. An old building that has been restored properly instead of murdered by bad lighting. There is intelligence in discernment. But discernment should increase pleasure, not reduce it. If knowing about wine means you enjoy wine more, marvelous. If knowing about wine means everyone at dinner becomes afraid to order, we have lost the plot. <\/p>\n
The same applies to travel. Yes, I would prefer the beautiful room. I would also like to wander out of it. The point of going somewhere is not to remain surrounded by amenities that reproduce the place you came from. Get outside. Eat somewhere strange. Walk too far. Talk to somebody. Buy something ridiculous at a market. Find the local version of junk food. Every culture has one. This is anthropology. I also think wealthy people sometimes become accidentally insulated from the very experiences that make life interesting. Money removes friction. Usually this is wonderful. Friction is annoying. No one dreams of a life with more airport lines. But inconvenience creates encounters. When everything is perfectly arranged, you can move through the world without ever needing anyone. That sounds efficient. It also sounds lonely. Some of the funniest experiences happen because the plan failed. The driver is late. The restaurant is closed. The weather turns. The hotel lost something. Now you have a story. Nobody tells the story about the afternoon when everything functioned flawlessly. “We arrived at 3:00. The reservation was correct. Nothing unusual happened.” Riveting. <\/p>\n
Luxury is most enjoyable when you can move easily between worlds. Black tie one night. Barefoot the next. Champagne at dinner. Coffee from a paper cup the next morning. A beautiful resort. Then a roadside stand with plastic chairs where somebody’s grandmother is making the best food you’ve eaten all week. That flexibility is attractive. It signals something deeper than taste. It says: I am here for the experience, not merely the evidence that I can afford the experience. And this matters in dating too. I certainly appreciate generosity. Most women do, whatever current cultural argument we are pretending to have about it. A man planning something beautiful is romantic. But I don’t want romance to require a concierge. Sometimes the perfect date is spectacular. Sometimes it is ordering takeout, opening a bottle of wine and laughing on the sofa. Sometimes you’re dressed beautifully. Sometimes you’re wearing something you would not want photographed. <\/p>\n
The person has to remain interesting after the room service tray leaves. Otherwise you are dating the hotel. And hotels, while excellent, rarely text the next morning. I think the truly luxurious life contains range. You can enjoy rare things without becoming dependent on rarity. You can recognize quality without needing everyone else to recognize that you recognize quality. You can enter a grand room without feeling intimidated. And leave it without feeling diminished. That may be the real sophistication. Comfort anywhere. I once heard elegance described as knowing what to ignore. I like that. Maybe luxury is knowing what to appreciate. The flowers. The view. The good sheets. The cold champagne. The man across from you who is making you laugh so hard that the people at the next table are beginning to stare. And then, perhaps later, the cheeseburger. Definitely the cheeseburger. Extra fries. Life is short.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I love beautiful things. This is not a secret. I like wonderful hotels. Excellent restaurants. Champagne served in thin glasses. Fresh flowers. Soft sheets. Beautiful clothes. A car arriving exactly when it is supposed to arrive. All of civilization, really, can be measured by whether someone has figured out how to make an experience more […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5585","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n