Traveling with one of my sons to drop him off at college, I decided to rent the movie “Obsession” at the hotel. My son had already seen the movie — he said he and his friends all love it — so he left the room and made some calls while I watched.

The movie fits eerily well with what Montaigne is assaying in this piece — about how people misunderstand the deeper forces at play in the universe and try to meddle for their own personal satisfaction. In the movie, this plays out as a character named Baron (or Bear, and I don’t want to call him a protagonist because I consider him loathsome) who is hopelessly in love with a woman named Nikki who is clearly not in love with him. He finds a magic way to make her fall in love with him.

The movie is wise in the way it does not let Bear off the hook for his unnatural act. In a sense, he has killed the real Nikki and replaced her with this demonic creature who loves him much like a dog does its primary human. This leads to all kinds of outcomes that might have been avoided if he’d admit what he’d done and shown remorse for it instead of taking advantage of her fallen state.

While audiences have found the movie an entertaining horror film, I saw the film as terribly sad. Nikki was destroyed for no reason other than a man’s selfish need to shape the world to fit him, and the entire world around them burned to the ground as well.

Yes, we should all be careful what we wish for, that’s the obvious lesson to be taken away from the film. But I think something is deeper at play — perhaps we should try to live our lives with as few wishes as possible and instead show gratitude for the life we already have.