In this day and age, luxuries are almost hard to judge. In ages past, having indoor plumbing as nearly everyone in the modern world has was unheard of by even the wealthiest individuals. Alexander the Great used a chamber pot, and had to wash his hands in a bowl fed from unfiltered waters. A cricket blackberry, which has all the luxuries most people could want in a phone, was also nonexistent in olden times. The fact that the ancients accomplished so much says great things about the human capacity to do without luxuries if they need to.

Today’s luxuries are far more difficult to define. While the luxuries of yesteryear could be things as simple as lights that require no flames, today the life of luxury doesn’t even involve being able to communicate with people anywhere in the world. You can literally talk to someone thousands of miles away, while you look up just about any kind of information you might want. You can even be paid large sums of money for things you can do on something almost magical, the Internet, also from anywhere. The abilities the modern world has bestowed on ordinary people make it very hard to define luxury.

Perhaps luxury in the modern world can be defined as much by what one doesn’t have to do as by what one has. To be in the lap of luxury is to never need to work, nor to appear a certain way to anyone else. Being successful can also be defined as being in a state of luxury, since the work you do can allow you to lay about or invest your time into silly pursuits as you please. While luxury is nearly impossible to define, it is getting more common for many people.