Do things change the way we act?

In the story "The handsomest Drowned Man In The World" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, a large body of a man is washed up on the shore. The people are so excited and happy about this man. I never really understood what the big deal was over a large man. They say the man weighed more than any dead man they had ever known. They began to ponder and come up with maybe he was floating to long and water sunk into his bones.

They didn't know who the man was, so they sent the men out to other villages to find out. The women stayed behind to care for the dead man. They were taking so much care of a dead man, like really what is the big deal?! The women shaved him, combed his hair, and dressed him. They held the most splendid funeral ever for a dead man.

The people of this village really loved this dead, drowned man. They did everything they could to prepare him and forgot about other things. They made sure he was properly taken care of and had the best funeral ever. They had never met this man, but yet they still did everything for him. The fact he was dead made me amazed. If they took this much care of a dead man, i'm sure they took good care of people alive.

This made me think, do things change the way we act? I thought about it, and through the story it made the women change the way they acted. They did everything for this dead man. Do we do that in life? We do, if we were to win a million dollars, we would change the way we acted a lot. This dead drowned man was the million dollars to the people of the village. That's all they needed to change everything. We often do that in life. We change for people and things that we shouldn't change for. He could be just any drowned man, but he sure changed the way the village began to act.