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Peter Sorgenfrei reflects on Thoreau's idea that the price of anything is the life you exchange for it. He explores what we sacrifice for work, money, and modern choices, asking whether the trade-off is worth what we're giving up.
Peter Sorgenfrei reflects on Thoreau's idea that the price of anything is the life you exchange for it. He explores what we sacrifice for work, money, and modern choices, asking whether the trade-off is worth what we're giving up.
Henry David Thoreau said, the price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it. And in modern life, the direct translation is we exchange our life by going to work, making money, and that's the price that we're getting for it or paying for it. But in broader terms, you could think about it in the sense of the price of anything is the time of life that you exchange for it. What is it that you're giving up? By doing something else, by not living the life that you want to live. And what is the price of that? The time that you spend with people, the activities that you do in your life that you really don't want to be doing. Obviously, we all have stuff we need to do and have to do— take care of ourselves, take care of loved ones. But there's a bunch of areas where we have choices. Next time you are faced with one of those choices, think about whether or not you're willing to exchange the amount of life for what you're getting out of it.
