The man who craves more

You got the raise and the relief lasted about a month. Then the new number became the normal number, and a slightly bigger one started glowing just out of reach. The line cook eyes the sous job. The driver wants the newer rig. The nurse who finally paid off one card opens an offer for another. Whatever the figure, the want runs a step ahead of it, and you never quite catch up to enough.

Seneca named the trap two thousand years ago, borrowing a line he loved: what makes someone poor isn't the smallness of what they hold but the size of what they're still grasping for (Letters 2, paraphrase). Read that twice. Poverty, in his sense, has nothing to do with the size of your paycheck. A person making good money and always reaching is poorer than a person with less who has stopped reaching. The hunger is the poverty.

This is the week's move, and everything else builds on it: enough is not a number the world hands you. It's a line you draw. Until you draw it, no amount lands, because the target moves every time you do.