by Christyl Rivers

Created on: July 13, 2010   Last Updated: September 04, 2010

Warning, you are being deluded!  “Free” has an ethical price, everything under natural law is give and take, there is no free lunch. It may even be said that when you give a smile for free, you GET back a sense of connection and humanity.  We owe our life to the gifts of creation, they are not free, we must pay a price to protect them.  Wondrously, this price when paid,  increases our bounty even more.

Most of the Helium articles on this topic are talking about the idea that ”the best things in life are free.” It is desirable, and even noble, to be thankful for the low cost of most things that make it a wonderful world, as the old song says. These people are saying that it’s not just the money or status that matters in life. They are on the right path, but a detour into the false belief that we can take without owing is not desirable or noble, but simply a delusion which ends up being quite costly.  In fact, other then freak aberrations of world creating events like earthquakes, volcanoes, meteor strikes, and methane explosions; there is only one threat to existence that we can actually affect.

Everything you experience has an intrinsic cost attached.  We are only now beginning to realize that clean air, clean water, clean food, and secure habitats have both internal and external costs.  If we as inhabitants of this earth do not respect that “cost”, we pay dearly. Nature offers incredible abundance if we align our needs with sustainable harvest, but if we exploit, plunder, destroy and abuse, we no longer have “free” resources, we have an expensive, even hazardous, mess to clean up.  A soaring albatross is the epitome of freedom, an oil soaked bird carcass is just a sad reality.

Until recorded history, everyone lived relatively cheaply in the natural world.  We had amazing biodiversity with huge numbers of gorgeous tigers and leopards, majestic whales, pristine forests, and billions of astonishing gifts to enjoy.

This does not mean that Nature is a whore who sells herself cheap.  On the contrary, the idea of money is an entirely abstract human designed concept. It has practical application. But the idea that everything we originally took for granted, such as free forests, streams,pastures, oceans, and more, is simply a denial of the cost of protecting these resources.

 We may feel like they are free because the costs are typically ignored until it’s

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