You read a comment on YouTube praising the Toyota Camry as the car of choice for the Non-Player Character, that enviable person for whom status and ostentation are matters of admirable indifference. You think of a more accurate term for someone who has no interest in showiness: the Non-Status Character, someone who shines from within and therefore doesn’t need an exterior studded with flashing lights.
Regarding the Camry, a pure NSC buys the LE version with its small wheels, no spoiler, and no sporty trim. The reward for choosing the blandest trim of the bunch is that you get over 50 miles per gallon, while the flashier versions get bogged down in the mid-40s. You also enjoy a smoother ride with those smaller wheels. Choosing the LE, therefore, is the most virtuous choice.
At least this is what you tell yourself as you wait at a red light at Carson Street and Hawthorne Boulevard while a silver Camry LE drives past and turns left onto Hawthorne. You squint at it and try to imagine owning it. You tell yourself that it’s just as attractive as the higher-priced trims. You remind yourself that some people on YouTube have commented that, visually speaking, the LE is their favorite trim. But for you, the LE’s insipidness is undeniable.
You say to yourself, “So we have here in the LE a Plain Jane Camry. No worries, though. Buy the thing, and you’ll grow to love it for its superior gas mileage and its ability to transform you into the person you aspire to be: the Non-Status Character.”
But then a horrible thought hits you: You buy the LE, and you never grow to like it. You never become the NSC. You remain a person who hungers for material beauty, something achieved in the Camry’s higher trims but denied in the LE. You remain a Person Who Appreciates Beauty, but now you’re stuck with the LE, denied the transformation into an NSC. As a result, you loathe yourself for not having the foresight to anticipate your failure to achieve the spiritual purity that would make you indifferent to ostentation.
At this point, you understand that the problem is one of language. Specifically, you realize that you are not ostentatious. You simply crave beauty in a car you drive every day. The two inclinations are not the same.
With this knowledge, you spend a few grand more on the SE or XLE without guilt. Because you drive only four thousand miles a year, the compromise in gas mileage is worth the beauty. You don’t particularly like yourself for making this compromise, but this is who you are. As much as you aspire to choose the blandest trim for maximum gas mileage, you’re not going to change.
You will experience the LE’s blandness on a deep level every time you look at it, and that feeling of regret will sit with you like the dyspepsia that follows an ill-advised jaunt to a nearby fast-food eatery. The increased gas mileage that looks good on paper won’t translate into the happiness of owning a plain-looking car.
You are not pure. You are a man of compromise.
Knowing this, you can now examine other categories in your life: your eating choices, reading choices, entertainment, pleasures, moral codes, and financial decisions. All these things are shaped by compromise, complexity, contradiction, and, at times, hypocrisy.
You are not a man of pure intentions and desires. You never were and never will be.
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