Status Sports

One of the most famous sports in Great Britain has always been

“keeping up with the Jones’s” or, in simpler terms, making sure that

when you look over your neighbour’s fence you feel better about

yourself. Your house should be a little grander, car a little shinier,

children a little cleverer etc. I used to feel very good about the

fact that I had no desire to participate in this sport. I thought I

was above competing for status in this way. I knew what life was

really all about, beyond the narrow-mindedness of

materialism. Who cares about possessions when it is living life to the

full that counts? Life should be about travelling, experiencing new ideas, places and people.

But the sport of gaining status has changed in recent decades. Now it

seems everyone is trying to boast their wild adventures on Facebook.

Everyone wants to show off the unique experiences they are having.

Everyone is counting how many places on the globe they can put a pin

in. Ordinary looking people of my parents’ generation are off

motorbiking round Cambodia. The head teacher of my primary school is planning to travel around Australia in a bright camper van.

There is always something unattractive about the desire for more and more,

whether it manifests in terms of material possessions like big shiny

cars or in the more modern compulsion to possess more experiences, to

have “done” more places. Although travel is undoubtedly a route towards incredible and life changing experiences, the way some people seem more interested in the Facebook comments on their holiday pictures than the experience itself is enough to make one almost despair of adventuring entirely.

In short, I feel a little like I have been well and truly beaten at my own game.

This makes me realise I was never above participating in the

competition for status. I was just playing by different rules.  Now

that everyone is on the same playing field, I wonder how status will

be expressed in this new arena. Will laughing cynically at manic

travelling and the constant drive for “experience” become the new

cool? Or is it time to start saving up my pennies again to buy a nice

big house and a shiny car?