The Price of Life is not the Cost

There’s a phrase we hear all too often now, “The Cost of Living.”
It slips easily into headlines, soundbites, political debates.
But what does it really mean?
It’s not the cost of a holiday.
Not the price of a night out, or the indulgence of a small luxury.
It’s the cost to simply exist.
That phrase disturbs me.
It reduces a human life to mere survival.
Stripped of joy, of creativity, of possibility.
Just survive... and eventually, die.
And what of a life lived only like that?
Life should never be measured in such brutal terms.
It is not a ledger entry. It is not a number on a spreadsheet.
Life is a gift. Priceless. A chance to create, to discover, to grow, to make beauty, to love.
Instead of asking how little a person needs to scrape by,
we should ask:
What do they need to blossom?
To become all they might be?
What gifts might lie dormant in someone simply because they were never given the chance to grow?
The price of life is not the cost of living. Life is and always should be priceless.