Some people think they’re rich…

When you walk through their huge house, room after room of cots and inflatable furniture, knockoff reproduction prints on the walls, and they follow you around as if you’d steal something.

Big, new construction houses that take up all their income just to keep it lit and floating line their block. They own cheap computers and two Kias are parked in their spacious two-car garage. Yet they look down their noses at you as if you’re some kind of impostor in their little faberge dreamworld.

Some people know they’re rich when they tell you to make yourself at home, ask if you want a beer, and commence grilling in their tiny, yet well-manicured lawn. Their vehicles are modest, but new, Toyotas. Their home is full of clutter and years of accumulation, grandparents dying and children growing up. Their re-surfaced hardwood floors don’t quite hide the wear of constant traffic, their walls are clean but stylishly executed. Colors match. Every space is used. Trees grow tall and strong.

The former is immortalized in Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, where owning bookshelves of book-printed-cardboard was the norm, and homes were the extent of most people’s wealth. Strange, possibly, or downright sad, that even after nearly 100 years, we’re still trying to convince ourselves that wealth is important and ownership of a great big nothing is more important than owning the smaller nothings inside–the nothing that makes us great as individuals.

Blah.