Smaug never spent a single coin.

He lay on the greatest treasure in Middle-earth and never once enjoyed it. He just guarded it and grew more possessive.

And then Thorin Oakenshield came along.

Tolkien called what happens to Thorin “dragon sickness.” It’s not cartoonish greed — it’s something more specific. The inability to receive what you have. To rest in it. To let it be enough.

Thorin reclaims Erebor, gets everything he fought for, and loses himself anyway. Bilbo goes home.

Ecclesiastes names the same disease:

I have seen a grievous evil under the sun: wealth hoarded to the harm of its owners… They take nothing from their toil that they can carry in their hands.

This is what I have observed to be good: to eat, to drink, to find satisfaction in your labor — for this is their lot. God keeps them occupied with gladness of heart. (Ecclesiastes 5:13-20)

The grievous evil isn’t poverty. It’s possession without reception. Having without being glad.

The cure is almost embarrassingly ordinary: eat, drink, find satisfaction, accept your lot. Let gladness do what grasping never could.

Bilbo goes home to the Shire. Tends his garden. Has his armchair and his pipe and his pantry. He is not a great man by anyone’s standard.

He is a glad one.

That, apparently, is harder than slaying dragons.