Augustine and the economic crisis

St. Augustine saw a beggar laughing and joking, and realized how unhappy he himself was. “My ambitions had placed a load of misery on my shoulders and the further I carried it the heavier it became…” he wrote in the Confessions.
I read this and looked at the wall where I wanted to put a big-screen television, thought about the fancy new boiler I thought I needed to replace the lemon that came with the house, the Wii and all its accessories. I thought, ‘he sounds like me. He sounds, in fact, like us.’

Augustine worked things through so that he could be happy without being a beggar, and without fulfilling his original ambitions. I wonder if we’ll do the same.