Esther and watched the documentary “The Queen of Versailles”, following the construction and lack of completion around David and Jackie Siegel’s mansion. It is a great movie, highly worth a watch and now available on Netflix.
While watching the movie, Esther made an observation that paraphrased went like this:
They (David and Jackie Siegel) are clearly greedy, every can get greedy. When the line between want and need is blurred we can all be greedy. Do we really need a bigger house? No, we are comfortable with where we are.
She makes a great point. It is so easy to lose the line between “content” and “wanting”, between “need” and “want”, our society pushes upon us messages of “consume”. It can seem totally justified to buy a new device or build the largest home in America.
I am going to try and keep the aged David and artificial Jackie Siegel in my mind when I start to have the “wants” out weigh the “needs”. It isn’t going to be a sure fire prophylaxis, but trying to recall how unhappy, how isolated and disconnected, they and their children were portrayed should give me pause. If you watch the movie, it should provide you some imagery to use too.
