Last night I had a dream. Well I guess everybody that slept did, or at least that’s what they tell us. In mine, I was moving into this new house, new construction. It was a ridiculously large and opulent MANSION, with water features and fantastic finishes all over the place. One of the pools had sixteen cabanas. SIXTEEN! Plus it was furnished. We’d brought our shabby stuff and it was all piled in the corner of one tiny room. There were two two hundred page owner’s manuals, full of operating instructions for the various systems and gadgets. And there were people everywhere, workers finishing up, cleaning people cleaning, and guests congratulating us on our good fortune.

I thought to myself, this is all very nice, but how can we afford it? I had a vague memory that it was supposed to cost around $500,000, but there was NO WAY it could have been built for that. A place like this would cost millions. Millions on top of millions. But even if the builder had brought it in at half a mil, by using slave labor and stolen materials or something, why hadn’t we considered how much the upkeep was going to be? We were going to go broke in a year. Maybe a day, from the waterfalls alone.

As I wandered from room to room, and down hall after hall, I kept saying to myself, this is lovely and grand, but it’s TOO MUCH. Even if we could afford to live here, which we couldn’t, it would be too much. I could never be comfortable with this much opulence. 

 I awoke with more relief than regret to discover it was, sigh, only a dream, and congratulated my dream self for being so level-headed. And I wondered if my waking self, assuming a lottery win or some unanticipated windfall, would be as sober and decent as my dream self.

I guess with that kind of attitude, I don’t even deserve to be rich. Fortunately for me and the 1%, whose interests and motivations I can’t even begin to imagine much less share, I never will be. Don’t show me the money.