The Price of Thought

Drove out to Marondera yesterday to treat people at my old school, Peterhouse. It takes me just over an hour to do the trip there. People ask why I bother. There are a couple of reasons; one is that I get to see my parents who live nearby. Another is that it is good business and I enjoy treating teenagers, I relate well to them, and they recover fast. But, increasingly, the reason I go is that the trip there has become my thinking time. There is little traffic at the time I travel out, and I normally travel alone. This gives me an uninterrupted hour of thought where I can bend my mind to problems that beset me, or to creating ideas for my writing. Normally, I set out a bit early so I get a few minutes at the other end to jot down anything worthwhile that’s come to mind. The rest of my life tends to get too cluttered to do any meaningful reflection/meditation. Should I ever give up the trip then I will have to diarise some other ‘thinking time’. Try it.

I was reminiscing on my last post and got wondering about the price of bondage. How much time and money to we spend on things that we are addicted to? How much money does a smoker blow away in a month? I’m a chocoholic- I could easily eat a bar a day, or more. This week I decided to be healthier in my snack choices-motivated more by an increase in the price of chocolate than anything else. For a tenth of the price of my usual ‘poison’, I can get the same weight in bananas- a significant saving if you crave chocolate as much as I do. I could have easily chosen to sacrifice something else to maintain my habit- something I have been guilty of in the past, and not just in the chocolate arena. At the end of the day is it really worth it, and do we have to wait for the cost to be ‘too much’ before implementing a change.

The flip side of the coin is ‘the cost of freedom’, but more about that another day-I have to work.