Luxurious Feet

How luxurious is the life that you are living right now?

There is a pretty simple way to determine just how well off you are in life, and I'll lead you there. But first I'm going to be annoying and answer the question above before you get a chance to answer it yourself. I'll make it even more annoying and point out that the above question was actually rhetorical, so there's not really any need for me to be answering it. And to top it all off, I'll do the most annoying thing and answer that question with a question.

"Yo dawg, I heard you like questions so I questioned your question with a question."

Instead of asking how luxurious you think your life is, what you should really be asking yourself is this: How comfortable are my feet right now?

Foot comfort is the most underrated indicator of how well off someone is. Now, I don't know your feet personally (although they seem very nice..maybe you can introduce us next time we see each other? ..nofootfetish), but I can confidently guess that they are at least pretty comfortable right now. 

There is a huge market for making peoples' feet more comfortable. Think about the warm, fuzzy socks, the shoes with gel in the soles, or even the foot vibrators at places like the mall. What about the hot showers that warm your feet up, or slippers to keep them cozy while walking around the house? I've seen people have tubs of water to dip their feet in when they get too hot outside.

There is also the negative connotation with the phrase, "He's got cold/itchy feet." This implies that the person is not satisfied with their life and decides to make a change. Either that or they actually have athlete's foot, but neither interpretation seems to indicate a particularly luxurious lifestyle.

It's different than treating other parts of your body nicely. In most cases, you're required by society to give your torso a shirt (maybe you'll even throw a jacket or hoodie on top of that shirt) and your legs some pants/shorts. You can slip your shoes off while sitting in church, but if you decide to slip off your pants it's suddenly some kind of offense. Maybe blasphemy. Some people choose to spoil their ears, bellybuttons, and fingers with jewelry. Hands are washed several times during the day, and sometimes the hair on your head is brushed just as often. Even armpits are treated like kings compared to feet; at least they get deodorant to keep them from smelling bad.

So what do feet get? They get sweaty from the suffocating socks and sneakers we shove them in. And then we stand on them all day.

The internet's saddest foot.

Feet are supposed to be tough, though. They have to support your entire body weight while you stand and take an even worse pounding if you start running. Over the course of a day, your feet have to tolerate nearly 1,000 tons of force. Tell that to your lousy back when it starts getting sore after you sit down for too long. 

This is what makes feet such a good indicator of how well off someone is. Society demands that the other parts of your body be taken care of first, so that is where most of the attention goes. Imagine how successful a person would have to be in life to pamper their feet. How much money, free time, and resources it would take to treat feet like they deserve. How much money would have to be available for you to go get daily pedicures? Think about how wealthy would you have to be before you could buy servants and force them to give you foot massages (This is the only way to get someone to give you a foot massage). It would take a lot of time away from work to wash your feet several times a day; it's not the most convenient thing in the world to do. Could you afford to do that? It would cost so much just to have comfortable feet. Now when you look at someone and see that his feet are wrapped with silk and he has people employed to fan, massage, and offer complements to them you will know that that man is living the dream.

I don't know how to end this post about feet, so here are feet at the end of a post.