Henry David Thoreau
The Ninety-Cent Ticket
The price of a thing is the days of your life you hand over for it
Thoreau, Walden, 'Economy'
He never said not to ride. This asks how to tell whether a thing is worth it.
What actually happened?
Thoreau set himself a small sum. Fitchburg is thirty miles from Concord, and the train fare was ninety cents, nearly a day's pay. He would start now on foot and arrive before night. You, he said, must first work a day to earn the fare, and will get there tomorrow, or tonight if you are lucky. His rule: "The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run."
The price is days, not dollars
In his arithmetic a price is not the number on the label. It is the part of your life you give up to get the thing, paid now or paid later. Ninety cents, for him, was a day.
Before buying a twenty-thousand-dollar machine, work out how many extra days of work it takes to earn it back.
Both roads on one ruler
He was not telling anyone to walk. He measured walking and riding on the same ruler: the walker spends the day on the road, the rider spends it earning the fare. Each costs a day. The question is which day you would rather have lived.
Set the hour you save by ordering in against the hour you worked to pay for it.
Seeing the trade is not refusing every trade
He wanted you to know you were trading, not to decline everything. Some things are worth those days and some are not. You have to weigh them one by one, and he did not do the weighing for you.
List the three biggest costs this month, note the working days each took, and keep only the ones worth it.
How do I use it today?
Where you are: you keep working more and buying more, and the pile grows while you feel emptier.
Ask first: how many days of my life does this cost, and am I willing to pay them?
Where it goes wrong: reading it as 'buy nothing'. He wanted you to see the exchange, not to decide for you what is worth it. He ate, too.
Lines to keep
The price is not on the tag but in the days.
Ask what life it costs before asking whether to buy.
Seeing the trade is not the same as refusing it.
Same situation, other people are asking
My calendar is full and none of it is mine.The same task costs me more than it costs everyone else.I finished nothing today and I'm too tired to speak.I gave these years to the work and the friendships went quiet.Too busy to have a life · all 9 questions →If this one named what you are going through,
send it to someone who needs it, or keep it somewhere you will find it again.