{Prompt: What expensive things have you bought?}
I was always fascinated by the idea of “hubris” and the potentially tragic consequences of having excessive pride. I first learned the word “hubris” early in life, possibly in elementary school, when I heard the tale of Icarus, escaping from imprisonment on the isle of Crete. He ignored his father’s warnings, and, filled with the pride and elation of his newfound powers of flight, he flew too close to the sun. The wax in his wings melted, his wings fell apart, and he fell back to earth — to his death.
Design Toscano Icarus
The Bible, too, includes cautionary tales about the perils of pride and of wealth. A rich young man — an aspiring disciple — finds that he is unable to follow the advice of Jesus — to give up all that he has, and give it to the poor. Not one, but three of the gospels include the following metaphor—which is the moral of the story: ‘It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.’
From these lessons, I took the dangers of affluence and arrogance to heart. I tried to live within my means, and even contribute a little to charity at an early age. I gave a bit of money to a radio-evangelist who had a prison ministry. I responded to a TV ad soliciting sponsors for impoverished children in South America. (I even received photos and translated handwritten correspondence from the child that I sponsored in Costa Rica, by way of the charity.) I volunteered to go on a mission trip to help make repairs to a Methodist pastor’s manse in Jamaica.
And I spent relatively little on clothing or food, primarily because I had relatively little to spend in those days, back in the 70s. But over the years I gradually accumulated some “riches” of my own. As I took jobs at Burger King, Arby’s, the News & Observer, and Raleigh Parks and Recreation, I began to accumulate income. My food and clothing expenditures became slightly greater as my taste for finer food and clothing expanded, until, once again, my purchases began to match my monetary resources.
I recall, in the 80s, during college, when my expenses were largely covered by an academic scholarship, I saved enough money to purchase a colorful woven sweater (in the style of Cosby’s Cliff Huxtable character on TV), and I bought a few rugby shirts and some colorful muscle pants. I finally had enough money to match the fashion commercials of the day.
And I bought a top notch 10-speed bicycle — a Fuji, at the bike shop on Hillsborough Street (between the tattoo parlor and the IHOP). I must have spent days leafing through the glossy Fuji bicycle catalog, coveting every one of the various models. Eventually, I couldn’t restrain myself anymore, and I bought the best one that I could afford.
While on exchange in Australia, I purchased a second-hand saxophone — a truly frivolous expense, because I had no plans to pack it and carry it back home again. It was only good for the duration of my nine month stay in Adelaide.
Slowly my barriers to wealth and to hubris were crumbling.
When I married, in 1991, we were gifted so much money from the Palestinian community that we were able to purchase (guilt-free) an entire suite of French Renaissance styled, solid wood bedroom furniture (with Pecan inlay). It included the bed, two night stands, a chest of drawers, and a dresser with a decoratively carved and scrolled tri-fold mirror. It was by far the most expensive purchase I had ever made… and it was beautiful.
Stanley dresser - part of the bedroom suite.
But when we had children, we made sensible, cost-efficient furniture buys. We found the Unfinished Furniture Outlet in Sanford and we painted or stained our unfinished children’s furniture and quite a few of the bookshelves that I still possess. Now they hold my beloved library of books.
We were also given heirloom stools and frames and side tables, once made by my grandfather. We inherited an antique writing table that I disassembled, stripped of varnish, and restained — my first attempt at furniture restoration.
I also spent some money on travel. While I was still a resident, Dianne and I took trips from Pittsburgh to Worcester, Massachusetts, and to Albuquerque, New Mexico. They were short trips to find jobs and interview for potential residency positions. But after residency, our travel excursions started to become truly grand.
With employment as a family physician, my benefits included a stipend for travel and continuing medical education (CME) expenses. Under the guise of legitimacy (to maintain and further my knowledge of medical advances), we could travel the United States.
We could go to a hotel near the Mayo Clinic in St. Petersburg, Florida, stopping to see the mermaids at Weeki Wachee Springs on the way. We could go to a CME conference in Scottsdale, Arizona, and drive around the Four Corners to see Canyon de Chelly, Monument Valley, and the Grand Canyon. Our love for roadside attractions and for the scenery of the national parks (a legitimate bargain), was kindled.
And yet, we still sought out bargains and discounts to offset our growing taste for fine things and big vacations.
As our children grew, and we vacationed together, we bought them clothing (hats and dresses) that was more than just functional — they were decorative… stylish… frivolous. We spent some of our reserves, not on ourselves, but on gifts to our children, our friends, and our family. Buying gifts for others gave me the pleasure of an impulsive purchase without as much regret.
In the 2000s, our musical purchases were somewhat lavish. We bought a Pearl Flute for Samantha (from Music & Arts at Crossroads Mall in Cary) to further her musical abilities. We bought a Schimmel studio piano (from Ruggero Piano in Raleigh), ostensibly, for Jasmine, but also for ourselves.
I bought a Washburn guitar at a music store in Gaithersburg, Maryland, with the help of my brother-in-law, Maurice. I was hopeful. But I only learned to play exactly one song on that guitar (“Shenandoah”, which I learned during my lessons at Cary School of Music.)
I still hold out hope of becoming a fingerstyle guitar player on par with James Taylor. So the guitar remains in the “library” with the piano. They serve as barometers of the accumulation of dust in the home, and as very expensive, decorative representations of our love for popular music and classical culture.
Washburn guitar and Schimmel piano.
The hardest expense to justify was the expense of the Olhausen billiards table that we purchased from Met Tech in Raleigh. There is a loose fabric of a logical argument, that we wanted to furnish a recreational room — a space for our children to hang out and socialize with friends, in a safe and well-monitored setting (at home). I think that’s a load of B.S.
I think we just enjoyed playing pool… we had a room bereft of furnishings… and we could afford to buy a completely recreational source of amusement.
From time to time the pool table is a site for communal amusement — during Halloween parties, for example. But most of the time, it is a beautiful, black felt-covered status symbol. It is most useful when we use it to pack or unpack our boxes of Christmas decorations, whenever we bring them down from, or take them back up to, the attic.
In the 2010s, the children grew up and moved away, and we found that we had become rich enough to buy some truly, truly expensive items. These purchases were in great part designed to improve our quality of life — our happiness. Our earning potential was at its peak.
We hired an architect to design an addition to our home, taking out a new mortgage to pay for the addition: a spacious living room, a home office (before the pandemic trend), and a particularly well-designed expansion of the existing kitchen. Of those three rooms, the kitchen was the least eagerly anticipated (by me, at least), but, by far the most rewarding upgrade. Parties might end up in the billiard room, but they always begin in the kitchen. And our continuing weekend family dinners, mostly prepared in the new kitchen, became a tradition. Spending time with Jasmine and Samantha was well worth the investment.
A Facebook post from our kitchen.
Perhaps the single greatest investment, ever made outside of our home, was the investment that we made to start a new business in about 2010. I took out two promissory notes, drawing on our personal funds, for the startup expenses. And I took a dramatic salary cut for the six years that Village Family Practice of Holly Springs existed.
In total, the business probably cost—conservatively— two or three hundred thousand dollars in lost revenue. Dianne became the primary breadwinner in our home, and I became an (underpaid) small business entrepreneur. The business wasn’t a failure, but it wasn’t a success either. It lasted for six years. Independent private practice just isn’t feasible when costs are not sufficiently reimbursed by large health insurance companies.
Before and after my experiment in self-employment we had sufficient wealth to truly splurge on some luxuries. We bought pottery from the Seagrove area in North Carolina, and from the Southwest US. Possibly the most expensive is a Zuni lizard pot from Arizona. But there are at least a hundred ceramic forms of all shapes and sizes in our collection.
I began making “acquisitions” of books for my book collection, including several different publications of The Arabian Nights and of Aesop’s Fables. Possibly the most expensive book was an early, illustrated French edition (1846) of The Three Musketeers (or more accurately, Les Trois Mousquetaires) by Alexandre Dumas. It was purchased from the Strand Book Store in New York City, for $300.
Les Trois Mousquetaires from The Strand in NYC.
I also bought some fine shirts, vests, and ties from Jos. A. Bank, when I was in particularly fine shape (around 2015), when I was biking regularly. They are ill-fitting now, but I still hold out hope that my “form” will return someday.
After a couple years of regular cycling, I felt it was time to get a proper carbon fiber bicycle, and I bought a Specialized Roubaix, in bright orange trim, with a “future shock” handlebar, and deep carbon fiber Zipp wheels. At $3,000, it was probably five times as much as my college bike, but I’ve put about 30,000 miles on that bike in its first decade. I think it was worth the price tag.
A happy cyclist, after the ride.
I also bought some things that I can’t defend. I bought a bottle of Armagnac (Marie Duffau) at a store in Dupont Circle for about $150, because I was feeling affluent and impetuous. (I’m sipping it now from my crystal Copper Fox distillery tulip glass.)
I bought an antique bronze sculpture of an art deco “flapper” by D H Chiparus, for the very same price, at a Blue Moon estate sale, somewhere in Raleigh. I felt like I had finally made that unbelievable find, of an antique treasure in an unlikely place. It felt so weighty in my hand, as I cradled it to the cashier’s table. I was afraid to set it down, lest some other buyer should scoop it up. Now it sits atop the antique desk in my library — the one that holds my most valued antiquarian books — a talisman from another century.
Close up of the Chiparus bronze statuette.
In 2019, I retired, and the golden years of a higher income (for serving as a medical director) came to an end. Still fortune smiled on me on two occasions. On one occasion, my mother gifted Dianne and me $3000 from the pension funds she had inherited when her brother Frank passed away. Together, Dianne and I chose an original painting by Stefan Horik, which we bought at an exhibit at the Grand Bohemian Hotel in Asheville. It uses broad strokes of oil paints in a palette of primary colors to depict birch trees, firs, and a stream in the woods of New Hampshire. We still love it.
Our Horik painting.
About 5 years later I received some unclaimed funds from the bank account of my deceased Uncle Robert in Florida. Once again we found ourselves in Asheville, which was now recovering from the devastation of Hurricane Helene, which destroyed about 75% of the studios in the riverfront arts district of the city. At the Philip Deangelo Studio & Gallery on Roberts Street, I found another piece of original art, called Moon Dance, and I met the artist, learning that all his originals were made on poplar or tin or paper (rather than canvas), built up with gesso, and then covered with acrylics, in bold colors and patterns. Naturally, we bought it.
But we no longer bring in money like we did before. Dianne has also retired. So until other windfalls come our way, the days of heady spending on furniture and decor are coming to an end.
Still, in retirement, we find ourselves traveling far and wide. We prioritize our expenditures on experiences and travel rather than possessions.
With only a little prompting, friends convinced us to take a cruise from Southampton, England to Reykjavik, Iceland, from whence we continued our travels along the rugged Icelandic coast, seeing volcanic formations and glaciers along the way.
With the promise of seeing our vagabond daughter in Greece, we booked an excursion to the Byzantine Roman cities of the Aegean, the monasteries of Meteora, the treasures of the Sultanahmet district of Istanbul, and the limestone formations of Cappadocia.
With no excuse whatsoever, we spent 4 weeks in western Europe, seeing the canals, shops, bikes, and museums of Amsterdam and Holland; the castles and churches of Bavaria; and the glorious mountains and valleys of the Berner Oberland of Switzerland.
It’s hard not to be inspired by such beautiful views… just as Icarus was inspired as he flew above the island of Crete.
It’s hard to give away all your possessions, to follow the path of austerity and of righteousness. It’s harder for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.
We do what we feel that we can… to give to charity—supporting relief for Palestinians, supporting hunger relief, and supporting social justice.
As we enter the twilight years of our lives, I foresee a culling of our possessions.
We’ve become acutely aware that they can become an encumbrance, unless they bring value to our lives or the lives of others.
I begin to actually read from my collection of books.
I begin to sell off collectibles—to reconsider the size of our pottery collection.
I wonder if I will ever learn to play the broken chords on my guitar—the scales and arpeggios on the piano.
Is it time to downsize—sell the pool table—find a smaller kitchen?
How deep is the hubris, that led to this accumulated wealth?
Of what use are these worldly things?
Am I to be like Zacchaeus, who gave half of his possessions to the poor, or like the rich would-be disciple who could give up nothing… or like someone in between.
Am I wise and resourceful like Daedalus, or impetuous like his son, Icarus — slipping “the surly bonds of Earth” — dancing “the skies on laughter-silvered wings” — putting out my hand to touch the face of God.*
What will be my fate?
The Fall of Icarus - photo by Andrew McCarthy
********************
- by John Gillespie Magee, Jr.
“Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of – wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air….
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace.
Where never lark, or even eagle flew —
And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
– Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.”
