lesson from the lorax

For a bedtime book last night, Ellie picked The Lorax. As soon as I started to read it, she started asking me questions about why the man wants to chop down all the trees. And so we got into an hour long talk about being greedy. I told her that never being happy with what you have and always wanting more is being greedy. And I gave her a few examples. I think she was trying really hard to wrap her head around the concept of greedy because every time I gave her an example, she said "tell me another one."
Finally I came up with one that I thought she would really get.
Say you and I are standing in a hallway and there are 4 doors and each one is a different color and I tell you that behind each door is a surprise. But you can only open one door and you can only have that surprise and you have to be happy with what you get because its what you picked.
She was with me so far.
Inside the pink door is a lollipop.
Inside the purple door is a chocolate bar.
Inside the yellow door is a balloon.
Inside the blue door is a doll.
Still with me super excited about what would happen next.
You pick the purple door because its your new favorite color and inside you find a chocolate bar. You are so excited because you love purple and chocolate bars are your favorite treat. So you carefully unwrap the chocolate bar and eat the whole thing and you are so happy. Until you realize that your treat is gone because you ate it and now you want to open all the other doors to see if there is something better inside those rooms. And you keep asking to open the other doors because one treat was not enough, that's being greedy.

And so, for the next 40 minutes we laid in her bed and came up with about a hundred more examples of being greedy. I'm still not sure if she understands what it means to be greedy, but she sure loves the idea of secret hallways lined with colored doors filled with surprises.