no greedy wishes

today is the 301st anniversary of ben franklin's birthday. funny, because i visited his grave in philadelphia this past weekend. it was a satisfyingly humble grave, and i was happy to be so close to such an interesting person. i stood there for a few moments and silently asked ben for brilliant thoughts.

anyway, for some reason, people had thrown change onto the concrete gravestone slab. we thought: hmmm, why make a wish on someone's grave? but, just because it seemed like the thing to do, my friend tossed a coin through the fence onto ben's grave. it bounced off and rolled back at us and into the street. ha!
we picked up the coin and concluded it was fitting that we didn't get an extra wish, since, earlier that day, we had thrown a dime (mine) and a quarter (his) into a fountain inside the philadelphia museum of art. amazingly, our coins had landed on top of each other. of course, this was magical and made it practically certain that our wishes would come true.

clearly, ben was reminding us that our third coin toss was unnecessary and could have even negated our miraculous art museum throws. thus, even from the grave, ben franklin reminds us to appreciate what we've been given and to consume only so much luck and magic as we need.