The Price

"Everything in life has its price." - Paulo Coelho (The Alchemist)

Everyone knows there is a price to pay for everything they get in life, but most of the time we decline to pay it. We forget if we don't settle the payment now, we still have to pay it later plus its interest. The longer we hold it, the more we have to pay.

Cheating. Stealing. It leads us nowhere but to more debts. Guts is all we need. Paying the price now is taking the risk, responsibility and our stands. Paying later is about suffering because of denial.

The thing is people may not see the guts, the payment. For instance, a student must attend the class every day otherwise he will be punished. We cannot really tell if the boy has paid the price or not when he decided to skip the class. If he knew the consequence and was ready to be punished then he paid what is needed. But if he left the class but was never ready for the punishment, he would somehow pay it some other ways. And nature knows better to handle that. For us, the fact is he has skipped the class and we don't know (or even don't care) about the payment.

How do we know that we do not overpay? I have no idea. I just believe that there is no such thing as ripoff when dealing with nature.

“Everything you want in life has a price connected to it. There's a price to pay if you want to make things better, a price to pay just for leaving things as they are, a price for everything.” - Harry Browne.

(Jun'11)