A few years ago, I was driving home from the office late in the evening. A friend was travelling with me. It had been a rough day for him, and somewhere in the middle of the traffic he turned and asked:
"If God appeared right now, what would you wish for?"
I didn't have to think about it. "I'd ask God to remove greed from the world."
I have always believed greed is the root of everything that goes wrong. Without it, people would be content with what they have. There would be no reason to measure yourself against the person next to you — in wealth, fame, beauty, power — and no reason to take shortcuts to get ahead of them.
My friend answered without hesitation. "Without greed there's no competition. Without competition there's no innovation, and no better future."
That stayed with me. I couldn't disagree with him, exactly. I just wished there were a third option — some way for people to keep moving forward without needing to have all of it for themselves.
Yesterday, I was taking my daughter to a doctor's appointment. We were stopped at a traffic signal when she asked, out of nowhere:
"Papa, what would you wish for if God appeared?"
I already had my answer ready. But I wanted to hear hers first, so I told her to go.
"I'd wish for God to remove greed from the world."
I turned to look at her. The same wish, almost word for word, that I had given a friend in a car years before she was old enough to ask the question.
I asked her why.
"Only one student can be the class topper," she said. "It's the same with art, with sports, with everything. Everyone else is still good at something. But some children are so greedy to be first that they bully the others and make them feel small. Those children lose their confidence. And then they stop doing well at the thing they were actually good at."
That is not the answer I had given my friend. Mine was about the world — wealth, power, people cutting corners to get ahead. Hers was about a classroom, and about what it costs a child to be made to feel small by someone who needed to win.
"So what do you think of my wish?" she asked.
And I heard myself say: "Greed should be avoided, yes. But greed is what makes people competitive, and competitiveness is what makes them prosper."
I had handed my daughter the exact argument that had been handed to me, in a car, years ago.
My stance hasn't changed. I still believe greed is evil. So why did I argue against my own wish the moment I heard it in her voice?
I think it's because she has so much ahead of her. I don't want her growing up confusing wanting with greed — holding back from something she has earned because she has taught herself that reaching for it makes her the bully in her own story.
Maybe that's the third option I was looking for that evening in the traffic. Greed is wanting more than you need, at someone else's cost. Ambition is wanting more from yourself. At her age she has already learned to spot the first one. My job now is to make sure she never gives up the second.
So — have I quietly changed my stance? Or is greed still evil?
I'd like to know what you'd wish for.
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