Is It Always What You Don't Have?

While winding along the back roads of the Southeast yesterday on my way home to Mobile, I stopped in Warm Springs, Georgia. For years I'd driven by signs on I-85 pointing to the Little White House of Franklin Roosevelt, but didn't want to take the time to stop. I was glad I finally did. There's a small but well-done museum with hundreds of interesting artifacts both of FDR's presidency and of his struggle with polio.

You're told that the cabin is in the same shape as the day he died (April 12, 1945). If so, the simplicity is affecting. For example, this wealthy and powerful man had the smallest and simplest of bedrooms and bathrooms. I could only think that he must have needed a place to get away from the trappings of wealth and power. If he'd been poor, his vacations might have been to a fancier place whose bathrooms gleamed with porcelain and gold fixtures. Instead he sought functionality alone.

The Presidential bathroom at Warm Springs,
just off the bedroom with its single twin-sized bed

Are we all this way? Do we automatically tire of what we have and unthinkingly seek what we don't possess, even if it means (temporary) renunciation of large parts of our lives?