A very popular TV game show debuted in the fall of 1972. "The Price Is Right" still airs today. Contestants are picked randomly from the audience. One by one the lucky person gets beckoned by the host with the now iconic invitation to, "Come on down!" to the stage. To advance, each contestant must guess the price of the chosen item without exceeding the actual value. The aim for each contestant is to keep going to stay in the game until the chance to win a prize or ultimately win the big prize.
In life though, we are told, "there is a price for everything". My favorite universal expression, whether viewed sociologically, politically, philosophically or even scientifically, is that "there is no such thing as a free lunch". From the micro to the macro world, the "free lunch" is a myth.
The cheese on a mouse trap is the ultimate "not-so-free-lunch" for the hapless rodent. Wild boars and deer find out that feeders make them as vulnerable as fish in a barrel. But, one may observe that whether in the savannah or the rivers' edge, even high up in the sky, predators get their lunch all the time. Yes, but not always - sometimes with a success rate that is as low as 15% - and they have to work for it. And it is never a cake walk for any of them to catch their prey. There is always the potential for injury, sometimes even death as they pursue their prey.
Well, grass and leafy greens come at a price. Each grazing animal must eat a lot of it to get the proper amount of nutrition and energy; often spending almost all their waking hours grazing, often head down, which makes them vulnerable. Others spent additional time chewing cud because digesting grass and leaves need the extra work. What prey animals do is essentially convert grass and leaves into protein, fat and carbohydrates into chunks of meat that predators dine on. That is the ecosystem. Maintaining that balance comes with a price.
Today, everywhere we look, that balance scale defines everything to make it just right. Upset that balance and the ecosystem breaks down.
Sociologically, it is the same thing. The student who strives the hardest gets to collect what he or she paid the price for. To be valedictorian, top of the class, does not come easy. It comes with a price. Those who only study so much, or others who do the minimum, or even none at all, make up the rest of the curve. That ecosystem defines the path of each graduating class.
Our sun has for billions of years now been providing energy endlessly, or so it seems. But again, at a price. It lights up the entire solar system, warms our planet, causes winds and hurricanes, charges solar panels but at what price? It has been losing chunks of its mass at the rate of 4 million tons per second for the last 4 billion years now. Ultimately, it will lose so much that by that time, the solar system shall be no more. So far, we and everything in the solar system have been having our cake and eating it too. But that free lunch has a finite ending, albeit for another 2-3 billion years more. There is little we can do about this and it is even infinitely little to worry about it.
Meanwhile, in a single and finite lifetime, there is this to ponder. One may make the right decisions; may do good things; may live a just life or one may do the opposite of all of those. There is a prize for the former and there is a price for the latter. In one belief system the price may come either abruptly or at some later time, often appropriately or slightly more costly. From that belief system came the word, "karma". Originally though, the word applied to mean a "prize" for a good deed or a price one pays for a misdeed. Now it is mainly used to define the price for doing the wrong thing.
Centuries ago in his letters to the Romans, (KJV, Romans 6:24), Paul declared, "For the wages of sin is death .." We will leave it at that but suffice it to say that across all cultures, philosophies and belief systems, humanity has always come to terms with the price for misdeeds. But we are generally hopeful. And so we also believe in, "Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works .." (Matthew 5:16, KJV). And so it is that we are presented with philosophical choices as well when we think beyond the physical.
Speaking of physical, biologically, the price for living longer is to grow old. Aches and pains and potential health issues are part of what we expect to pay for a lengthy life span. You want to live long? The ticket is punched by a ticking clock, the flipping of calendar pages, the rhythm of the marching seasons going softer and softer until one can no longer hear it. Such is the price. Such is the price to anyone willing to pay for it.
The good news is that we live at a time when the price of aging is getting cheaper, figuratively speaking for the most part; much too expensive for some of them, i.e. organ transplants, cancer treatments, etc. Modern medicine and health care have greatly improved managing the problems of aging. We are living at an age when vision, hearing, blood pressure and diabetic issues, to name a few, can be managed and corrected effectively.
Today, we are reaping the fruits of centuries of development and breakthroughs in medicine and health care. The accumulation of knowledge, inventions and precision in diagnosis, procedures, and tools did not come without a price. But today, much of humanity is enjoying the prize. In a way, we share the benefits that countless scientists, researchers and developers, whose accumulated efforts and dedication, paid the price for which so many Nobel prizes were given. The connection between their efforts and the benefits we now enjoy is not trivial.
And it must come to this: paying the ultimate price. The mouse that nibbled on the cheese paid the ultimate price but not without saving other mice. Research has shown that for every mouse caught in a mouse trap there are at least a dozen or more mice that were spared. That mouse trap will not catch another mouse unless it is cleaned thoroughly because the dying mouse caught in it will likely have produced a "death scent" that will warn the others to be wary of the next free lunch.
On a human scale, we have first responders who paid the ultimate price to save others. Our military's history is replete with heroic sacrifices that countless others may go on to live a little or a lot longer. Such sacrifices paid the ultimate price to buy the prize of freedom. Many died so young, so that many more will grow up and grow old.
So, we pay the price for living longer but we must keep in mind that after every sunset, when we see another sunrise bookended by another sunset is another extra day that is worth paying for.
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