Yesterday ended with a pretty evening, and I went for a walk before supper. I live in a basement apartment in, well, the low-rent section of a suburban city next door to Seattle. My mother rolls her eyes each time she thinks of my present living arrangement. But I can pop out of my front door and wend my way uphill through well-gardened landscapes, until I reach sweeping views southward across Lake Washington and across to hills and ridges in every direction.

Last night, the lake was a quiet sheet of silver, and lights blinked on the hills around it. At the highest point along my walk, I came to a subdivision of very expensive houses set among finely landscaped grounds, perhaps modeled after the rural manor houses of Europe. As I walked along street after street of elaborate residences, I began to wonder what the owners do for a living that allows them to afford their houses.

Then I remembered a story that my brother R recently recounted. He’s a firefighter on the east side of the lake, where expensive homes are even more common. He and his colleagues were dispatched on an emergency medical call to one of those homes. R recalls pulling the aid car into the driveway of a huge, elaborate home, with a luxury car parked in front. Inside, the firefighters found no furniture, rugs, or pictures--just a man, alone on the floor with a laptop and the cell phone he’d used to dial 9-1-1. He was crying, and in the midst of a panic attack. He explained that he had felt compelled to buy his property to fit in socially. But now he faced a financial crisis, and had no idea how he ever would pay for his house and car.

R says that this sort of encounter is not uncommon. And maybe it was ever thus. Poor human beings! At bottom, we just want to feel self-assured and respected. May that man eventually find peace and self-respect in a smaller, cheaper place. And may I continue to feel content in a modest home...