moral or a dilemma?

In childhood, I read this story about a poor man who was gifted a small house. When he got into the house, he had an option to open a green door to another house, which could be more beautiful or not, or the opposite. But whichever choice he made, he could not reverse it.

The man chose to open the door, and he found himself in a more beautiful house. He chose the green door again  and got into an even more beautiful house again which had all the things he didn't even know he needed. That way he found himself in more pleasing situations one after the other. It went on until the 6th time when he opened the door and found himself in a dilapidated waste land. Now there was no green door. And there was no option to go back. The man was stuck.

In the childhood, the story had the outlined moral that our greed will lead us to be discontent with our current circumstances and it may lead us to lose what we have.

But I read it in the shade of a dilemma.

As much as there is a chance of you discovering a wasteland on the other side of the green door, there is also a danger of settling for far less for yourself if you stay where you are. I would argue that greed is understandable in being a  product of not knowing what you want and hoping that something out there is going to make you happy. In the sequence of events that were happening to the poor man, it was not that unreasonable for him to expect that things will keep improving as he kept knocking on one door after another. I don't blame him. There is no smarter way to choose better.

   

 If we are to face dilemmas like this frequently and the questions such as what we want and how much of that we want, are going to be confusing and uncertain as hell, in some of those situations, another factor arises.  Sometimes , something in our life may be so absolutely, glaringly, mind numbingly wrong that we may still determine with a reasonable degree of certainty that it is NOT right for us. We can rule out, if we cannot rule in. We can venture and risk everything . It will be a respectable and authentic journey even if it leads to barren wastelands and even if to others, it may appear as a cautionary tale.