Wear Your Kicks
-MKBHD
This post is 1,217 words, about a 6 min read. Enjoy!
I watched a video by one of my favorite creators, Marques Brownlee. He is the biggest tech creator on planet Earth (just in case there are other planets with content creators). In the video, he reveals his personal shoe line called the Atoms M251.
The shoes are very much him. They are heavily inspired by the Jordan Retro 1s. However, they are really cool to look at. But I am more of a Vans and Converse guy, plus it is hard for me to stomach the idea of spending $185 on a pair of shoes. So it is unlikely these shoes will ever be in my life.
However, there was a line in the reveal video that stood out to me. He said, "Now if you get these, you have to promise me one thing. WEAR YOUR KICKS!"
He went on to explain the current shoe culture which is more about babying your shoes or buying shoes to never wear. He talked about how he always gets clowned on social media for using shoes for its actual purpose. Which is to protect our feet.
I laughed it off and closed out the video but that sentence, "Wear Your Kicks." Kept ringing in my head. I realized the mentality was not only shoe culture. You see it in the way people talk and buy things like clothes, bags, toys (guilty), vinyl records (guilty), etc.
This led me to a simple question:
"Who OWNS WHO?" or better yet "What Owns YOU?"
We are at a point in culture, where we do not own our possessions but our possessions own us. We buy things not because they can be used to make our life a little bit easier but rather for the possibility that it could:
Go up in value
Status symbol
But in truth, this is not new. We, humans, have always had a need to collect and preserve things. We have always assigned value to items that do not necessarily have value on their own merits. We are social creatures with the ability to conjure up stories that capture our imagination. A powerful enough story can make a picture of a rock cost millions of dollars and the dollars in your pocket worthless.
But this is a topic for another newsletter.
Story Time:
There was a man who always wanted a Corvette. He had dreamed about having one since he was a little boy. He had designed every single aspect of the one he wanted.
After years of hard work and putting money away, he could finally buy the Corvette. He was so proud when he signed all the documents, shook the hand of the dealer, and drove off the lot that Saturday afternoon. As he was about to pull into his garage, he saw his wife's car and thought to himself, "What if she extends her door too far? She could scratch the paint off my brand new Vette." He decided no one could park or put anything in the garage anymore. That night, he was so excited he could barely sleep. He just kept going to the garage to look at the car.
On Sunday, his wife asked him to run to the store to grab a few things. He was excited for any excuse to drive his Vette. He quickly agreed and went to the store. However, as he approached the store he thought to himself, "I do not trust all these people, I mean look at their cars. If I park where I would normally park, someone might scratch my Vette." So he decided from that day forth, he would always park in the furthest spot from the building where there was absolutely no one. If necessary, he would park in a completely different location as long as it was empty.
On Monday, he drove to work ecstatically ready to show off his new ride to his co-workers. But as he approached the building, he remembered how tight parking could get. So he decided to park a block away at the second parking deck his company owned for events. He usually hated when he had to park there but to protect His Vette, it was worth it. During lunch that day, he showed his co-workers the car but did not allow anyone to get close to it.
On his way home that evening he thought to himself, "I looked so dope in my Vette." But as he was driving he noticed a Honda Accord going in the general same direction as he was. He began to worry that he was being followed. So he a different route home. He was not being followed but it took him an extra 30 mins to get home.
That night as he was about to sleep, he remembered the Honda Accord following him. He got worried that someone else might have followed him and would steal his Vette. He kept getting out of bed to check on the car. He could not sleep not out of excitement but out of anxiety and fear. This went on for the rest of that week. His work suffered, and his wife kicked him out of the room cause she could not sleep with his getting in and out of bed.
On Friday, he was completely exhausted and sleep deprived. He thought to himself, "Is this what my life will be with this Corvette? I cannot do this." So the next morning, he drove back to the dealer and returned the Corvette. He drove home that day in his old Honda Accord.
Just because something is more expensive does not make it better for your life. A good portion of the time, it actually makes our life a bit worse because it removes the freedom we once had.
I love what Katie Gatti Tassin of Money With Katie wrote in a blog post called "Why Nice Things Might be Making Your Life Worse", which is counter to popular belief. She said:
What's the point of owning something so fancy and expensive that, even when it majorly inconveniences you, it's too prohibitively valuable to simply discard and move on?
…
Consumerism tells us that nicer things will make us happier, but remember who profits from you believing you need to splurge on the fancy car—the car company, the insurance company, upscale car washes... the list goes on. The person at the bottom of that beneficiary list, is you.
The world will tell you to buy the best most expensive thing. The world will say it is what will make you happier, more fulfilled, etc.
That is hardly ever the case.
It is okay to buy nice things if you can afford them. But my question is; If you have to adjust your life to fit those things into your life to such a level that your freedom is taken away:
Can you actually afford to own the item?
Do you actually own the item or Does it OWN YOU?
The more things I add to my life the more I ask myself, "Am I becoming a prisoner of my possessions?"
Generosity>greed
✌🏾
Recommended Reads
Morgan Housel, What Makes You Happy? A simple but heavy question but the answer is a lot simpler than we like to believe.
Ben Carlson, How Rich Are the Baby Boomers? He Breaks down how the wealth in America is broken down.
Jack Raines, Did Judas Iscariot Make the Worst Deal in History? Let me spoil the answer for you, YES!! It cost him, his life.
Jack Raines, Your Network. How to build a network of people for your career and life.
Nick Magguilli, Rich vs Wealthy. Nick uses data to break down the difference between being Rich vs being Wealthy. There are more differences than we would think.