Why Rich People Scare Me
Our tendency to compare ourselves with others is genuinely terrifying
I’d just come home from watching Crazy Rich Asians with my partner, and I was bawling my eyes out. It wasn’t just a passing teariness from the movie either — it was that deep, existential empty-feeling kind of sadness, the sort of sadness that makes you feel as though everything you are and everything you’ve strived for is folly and futile. My partner tried to console me, to no avail — I was inconsolable.
How could a lighthearted rom-com about a woman winning the affections of her fiancé’s obscenely rich Singaporean family be so soul-destroying?
At the time, I chalked it up to stress and sleep problems — little did I know how deep it ran, or indeed, how this might be something we all suffer from.
Let’s backtrack.
All my life I’ve grown up with, if not crazy rich people, then at least moderately rich people. Rich enough to sense a difference between them and their families, and me and my family.
You see, I grew up in a nice neighbourhood — white-picket suburbia to the dictionary definition. We’d wave to our neighbours on evening walks and from their latest-model BMWs. Another hosted art classes in her home studio, while her husband built a light-winged Cessna in the garage and tested it on the street. My friends were (and are) a mix illustrative of modern multicultural Australia, though their parents all had one thing in common — they worked in either IT, Finance, Engineering or Management. Each Christmas break they’d go away on overseas trips. When I’d go over for playdates, I’d subconsciously absorb how neat their homes were, how quiet and orderly everyone and everything was. While I was over, their parents would invariably have guests over too, in and out the front door.
In contrast, my family never really had guests over, for dinner or anything. The TV was always on, and we’d shout across the house to communicate. Over Christmas, the furthest we’d drive was up the coast to visit family. And my parents worked humble, non-high-powered jobs. All this ran contra to the social landscape around me.
Now, to clarify, I know many many people have had much tougher upbringings than me. I readily acknowledge the relative stability I’ve enjoyed. I want to make clear, never have I been jealous or resentful of my peers, nor have any of them done anything terrible unto me. In this article, I’m not complaining— I’m merely stating a weird set of observations that I came into lose awareness of as I grew up, in the hopes of pointing out something helpful (I think) to us all — so, back to it.
During high school I, like everyone in a sense, had terrible self esteem. Around this time, my brother developed mental illness — meanwhile I was surrounded by a bunch of people who all seemed to have their life perfectly together. I was seen, because of my natural shyness and proclivity toward art and drawing, as the ‘weird kid’ of my year-group — something I took to heart and, I think, unknowingly applied to my family too; The ‘weird family’.
As my peer group got their driver’s licenses, they got with them new cars. I drove ‘round our banged-up 1998 model Falcon well into my twenties. As we all graduated (I was the first in my family to go to university), my friends went out and got respectable, well-paying jobs. I didn’t —I tried to self-study medicine as a half-assed rebellion against my arts-based education and, failing, fell into a deep depression not knowing what to do with my life. Coming out of it, I gained direction, self-esteem, a partner and a job — but it all reared up again as my friends starting buying properties on the Gold Coast and getting married with glitzy ceremonies.
Once again, I felt like the odd one out.
Which brings us back to Crazy Rich Asians, and me bawling my eyes out. My partner, being unable to comfort me, suggested that I speak to a professional— she was right. It had been a long time coming.
The psychologist looked at me as I relayed what had happened. He wore soft round-rimmed glasses and sat opposite me, cross-legged in a brown suit, with black orthopaedic sneakers on his feet and a notepad in his lap.
“So, what was Crazy Rich Asians about?” he asked, in one of those absurd moments that could only happen in a psychologist’s office.
I roughed the plot — a young NYU professor falls in love with an ex-pat, whose family, (as she discovers way too late into their relationship to be believable — but whatever), just happen to be multimillion-dollar real estate developers in Singapore. Throughout the film, our star wilts down the cold heart of her fiancé’s dragon-mother, and ultimately (*spoiler*) wins her respect.
“And what were you thinking during all this?” the psychologist asked.
“I was thinking about how worthless I was,” I answered. “Like I haven’t done anything or gone anywhere in 28 years.”
“Had anything else happened in the lead-up to this? You said you were with your partner…”
“Well, we had an argument earlier in the week.”
He shifted in his seat, “Oh? What about?”
“Well… I’d picked her up from work and she’d brought home some clothes that she’d found in a dumpster. I was… shocked. I said, ‘no you have to throw them out.’ I was so astonished that she could do something like that. And, well, she rightly got defensive and felt I was attacking her when all she was doing, in her eyes, was being quite resourceful.”
“Interesting…”
We spoke about it for a little bit more before the psychologist asked, “And you don’t see a connection between this argument, and the movie?”
“No — they feel unrelated.”
“The movie seems to have been quite triggering for you,” he explained. “It had a lot to do with marriage, and wealth. And, you said your partner had rummaged around in a bin for some clothes — in one sense, that’s an ‘act of poverty’. Do you think ‘wealth’ and status might be an insecurity of yours?”
Before he’d even finished getting the words out, everything clicked. My heart and mind raced — I wasn’t sad; I was scared. Scared of being seen as being poor. Of being seen as being weird. Of being weird and poor together, at the same time. Unknowingly, a gigantic inferiority complex had been forming in the background of my life; Had been eating away at my ego for years. And it had manifested itself in weird ways — in bursts of meanness toward my parents, in being silent about my brother, in wanting to be a doctor, in needing to act as though money were no object while out with friends, in feeling coy as I stepped into their BMWs or their homes, in almost buying an off-the-plan apartment way before I was ready — and, most recently, in arguing with my partner about dumpster-diving for clothes. To this day, I feel, on some deep insatiable level, as though I have to prove myself — now I understood where that was coming from.
“Yes,” I replied.
I think to an extent, we’re all hardwired to cast ourselves as a ‘have-not’ against the ‘haves’ in our lives, whatever socioeconomic position we find ourselves in. And it mightn’t even be about money — it might be about our hair, or our smarts, or our physical abilities. Whatever it is, we fixate on our deficits to our detriment. The result is an anxiety about our own perceived poverty, that runs much deeper than money, and a weird social pressure to overcompensate, to live above our means — or worse, to resent those above us.
Social media only feeds the beast. Study after study shows that higher social media use is linked to higher rates of depression. It’s little wonder why, when we compare the unedited version of our lives to everyone else’s highlight reel.
Now realising this, I’m aware of it, and more able to outthink it.
Because focusing on what you don’t have, undermines a good portion of what you do have; It gets in the way of the relationships you have been able to make with others; The homelife and health you’re able to enjoy; The compliments you receive and the dreams you aspire to; Even, a good movie with a loved one…
I wonder, how many of us fall prey to a poverty complex of our own? How many personal dreams do we forego for how they’ll be perceived socially? How many decisions do we make that aren’t really for ourselves, but for the approval of others? And, more fundamentally, how many of us unknowingly live our lives under the spell of a bad idea?
That’s the really scary thing.
