Prosperity ties us.
It ties us down.
It ties us to the world, see.
Prosperity makes it hard to let go – hard to let go of things – of stuff.
We are here for such a short time.
Let’s not hold on to things so tight.
Prosperity knits a man to the World. He feels that he is ‘finding his place in it’, while really it is finding its place in him. His increasing reputation, his widening circle of acquaintances, his sense of importance, the growing pressure of absorbing and agreeable work, build up in him a sense of being really at home in earth, which is just what we want. You will notice that the young are generally less unwilling to die than the middle-aged and the old.
–C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters