There are a few desires in my life that I would gladly spend a great deal of money on. These desires - I can honestly say I would be a miserable person if I could not obtain them. I think it is well within our rights as human beings to pursue happiness, even happiness that is monetarily heavy, with the caveat that we keep learning, keep expanding our sphere of social awareness and keep trying to empathize.

If, in our continuous search for meaning, we find that our material desires descend into meaninglessness, I think this is natural, even admirable. And then there are desires that are experiential, that derive from our insatiable hunger for new human connection or to maintain the old, whether small-scale (family, friends) or large (Europe, the world). I think these experiential desires affirm our humanity, expand our knowledge and our capacity to empathize. If sometimes there is a price tag to these kinds of desires, I think it is almost an accident of our culture, of where we are born and under what unique circumstances.