Case history: greed

2024 Author: James Gerald | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 14:00

The heart grows cold, the lips are compressed into a thin thread, the mad gaze repels others … Do you think this is some kind of terrible African infection? Well, you're right about something. It is indeed a disease, but typical for many people. And this disease is greed.

The seeds of greed live in many of us, but they germinate in some to a greater extent, and in others to a lesser extent. What is this greed? Every person has come across its manifestation at least once in his life. Back in kindergarten, one of her friends was greedy and did not let them wear a new hairpin. Or maybe you yourself have zealously defended the right to personal property? Someone says that greed is in the blood of a person. And what, it turns out, nothing can be done about this quality? Maybe not communicate with a greedy person or still endure his stinginess?

No, greed is a disease that can develop, or it can fade, and can still flare up with renewed vigor in the absence of prevention. Let's try to get rid of the symptoms of this disease.

Stage 1 - manifestations of greed can be seen only in yourself, but not in others.

Imagine that you have brought luxurious expensive chocolate with you to work so that you can pamper yourself with your favorite delicacy in a minute of intense brain work. What do you do when the thought comes to mind: "Isn't it time for us to eat?" Do you take out your homework and invite your colleagues to share the sweetness of the moment with you? Or do you grab a bag of chocolate and sneak into a secluded place where these gluttons will not claim your long-awaited dessert? If you choose the second option, it is not good.

No, it is clear that no one obliges you to share, if not the last, but the most beloved with not particularly close people. Or maybe for once you've gone broke on a really expensive set and want to stretch the pleasure for as long as possible?

If you do not have an all-covering generosity, then your choice is quite reasonable. Your chocolate - your time - your money. If you can't explain why, but you eat your daily Mars bar, when your best friends-colleagues go to the smoking room, there is something to think about. If at the same time you feel awkward, something like shame, it's not so bad. Do you know how the song is sung: "Share your smile …"? So you smile and share what you usually regret. Believe me, it's not scary at all, but very pleasant. There are so many problems in life, and if you spend yourself on such stupidity of this world as greed, it will only be worse for you.

Stage 2 - finding signs in yourself is no longer surprising, but unpleasant in others.

A friend comes running to you with burning eyes and tearfully begs you to lend her a certain amount of money. Moreover, a certain amount ends with more than one zero. Confusion is reflected on your face, tempting pictures of spending this money float before your eyes and grabbing hands of a friend, pulling hypothetical purchases from under your nose. But that's what friends exist to help each other out at the right time. And you, barely holding back a sigh of disappointment and words of irritation, reach for your wallet. Do not flatter yourself, it is unlikely that your smile on duty managed to hide true feelings from your friend. If she's not a shameless breed, she won't bother you anymore. But the conclusions will be made accordingly.

If you assess yourself objectively, you understand that you are … no, not a greedy person, God forbid, but not the most generous person. Just try, when someone asks you for something, put yourself in the place of the one asking. What do you need money for - for a hundredth pair of shoes or for an expensive medicine? The case in which stinginess is irrelevant is obvious.

If you can somehow figure it out with yourself, then it is somewhat more difficult to do it with others. It’s unpleasant, oh, how unpleasant it is to understand that your loved one regrets money on you. Not only will you not get a gift from him without a reason, but also about you get something bought on the basis of "less money, less energy." No matter what men (and women) shout that the person himself is important, that the passion for gifts speaks of self-interest, but any woman is pleased when gifts are given to her, yes, expensive gifts. But the main thing is that with soul, with love, with feeling. The point is not in the gifts as such, but in the attention, for which he is just as sorry to spend himself as money for the purchase itself. But if the situation with gifts can still be somehow justified by natural male lack of sentimentality, lack of money or time, but when your lover, walking along the street next to you, suddenly wants to show himself as a knight and says: “Now I will buy you flowers! These ones!" - and chooses the smallest, most seedy, cheapest bouquet, one can only guess whether he is joking or really considers himself a hero. Of course, circumstances are different, and what sometimes seems to us to be stinginess and greed may be the result of some unknown obstacles. And, nevertheless, a stingy person sooner or later manifests himself. If you have the strength, you can fight with him: to rejoice violently when receiving his rare gifts (so that there is an incentive to give more), to give him gifts herself (to feel ashamed), in conversations, smoothly lead to the idea of how wonderful it is to be generous (by the way, a woman's word can mean a lot to a man), in the end, find him a high-paying job. Otherwise, his second stage of greed runs the risk of smoothly flowing into the third. And you will have no choice but to console yourself with the thought that he is very, very super-mega-economical.

Stage 3 - hopeless.ru

They say about such people - pathologically greedy. When your own is not enough and you want someone else's. When it’s scary to ask them for help, you’ll get nothing but humiliation. The more they have, the more they want. They sincerely consider themselves to be right and deeply offended if they are called greedy. They live and exist for the sake of accumulation, preservation, and multiplication. They all translate into monetary value. They protect their own, like a tiger cub. They may be rich or they may be poor. But in any case, they are not self-sufficient - they always lack something, they are unhappy in the generally accepted sense of the word. And happy when looking at their savings, like anorexic patients when looking at a diminishing figure on the scales. And they are not ashamed. One can only hope that one morning one of these gobsecs will wake up and in some kind of emotional impulse will think not about himself, but about those around him, will do something pleasant not for himself, but for those close to him, help the one who needs help, instead of thinking: "Who will help me?" Dream, dream, illusion? I would like to believe that it is not.