he doesn't download music. he doesn't buy rubbershoes from greenhills. and he doesn't buy pirated DVDs. he believes that notwithstanding our third world status, we should buy deserve nothing but the originals. so you can just imagine what he spends his hard-earned money on and what our balikbayan boxes from our parents look like.
me - who happens to be the lawyer in the family - i'm not as virtuous. i buy bootleg DVDs (almost got caught in a raid once!), the 40 newest songs on my ipod have been downloaded from 4shared, and got a major virus attack cause of the number of games i got online. but - and this is a major but, at least as far as my wallet is concerned - i believe that if i were going to buy a bag and it's going to have some designer's logo stamped all over it, well, it's going to have to be the real thing.
ironic, isn't it?
now, given my clearly less-than-honorable position on intellectual property rights, i've abstained from making any sort of judgment when it comes to other people's choices. so what if that girl beside me is lugging what is an obviously fake burberry -- her choice, her price points. if she believes that the greenhills version is as good as the real thing, then i won't be mocking her. if you don't judge me for spending my 13th month pay (and then some!) on what used to be the outer covering of an animal, i won't judge you if yours was manufactured somewhere in china.
why the rant?
the other day, someone asked that i scrap the idea of including as a task (in an activity we were planning) the purchase of pirated dvds. while i was wasn't happy about it, i said, okay, the task can be easily changed. after all, he may be a purist like my brother. what got me upset though was when someone who i know actually purchases fake DVDs and not-real bags (and proud about it too -- she mentioned that people spend way too much on designer bags and she couldn't justify the purchase to herself, hence the buying of non-originals) commented insinuated that i was so wrong in including that activity as it clearly promotes piracy which - for all intents and purposes - is stealing (and therefore a sin).
my first reaction? i wanted to point out each and every single faux designer bag in her closet. i wanted to list all the times we bought fake DVDs together. i wanted to express how plastic she was for citing my intellectual property violations when she herself is oh-so-guilty of the same thing herself. i was UPSET ... wait, upset doesn't even begin to cover it.
after i'd calmed down, i realized that more than the fake/real bags, and beyond the authentic/pirated DVDs, what got me upset was my pride. she had pointed out a flaw, and i was upset that i wasn't perfect. i wanted to be praised for my brilliance, not to be dressed down for my lack of foresight. ah, pride. and even if i had all the pretty bags in the universe (including the coveted hermes birkin) none of them will get me into heaven, and none of them will change the fact that i -- a child of God -- was too proud to admit a fault.
0 said hello!:
Post a Comment