3-16-19 FREE

There is a section in the KSL online Classifieds app with the category label: FREE. Its the only category where they have used all capital letters. There’s something magical about FREE. The other day Dave and I were in a furniture store and someone said they were serving free hot dogs and Coke, so of course we found the escalator and made a bee line to the aroma of steamed hot dogs and mustard. There were something like 100 people there eating standard average hot dogs on short little buns. You’d never have guessed the store ever had 100 people in it at one time. We Americans do like FREE.

Because I carry an extra “bargain” chromosome in my DNA I know my weakness for free stuff. I literally do not allow myself to move the mouse on my computer over the word FREE in the online classifieds. I know what will happen if I click on it. It would be like an alcoholic walking into a bar. 

FREE is actually a misnomer, if you take a look at it with philosophical eyes. Going back to the very basics of human existence, at least in my belief wheelhouse, we were all made to be stewards over our stuff. Our stuff, and our people, and our time – pretty much everything. So, when I decide to bring that plastic cooler shaped like a giant football into our house, I have taken responsibility for it as it fits in our family community. If it takes up space on the basement shelf, and is never used, and the case of powdered sugar that should actually be on that shelf has to go on the floor instead, and then the laundry goes on top of that, well then what kind of steward am I over that cooler or the other stuff around it, over my space, and ultimately over my time? And that’s not even talking about the emotional weight of things. Anyway, as they say in the song; Freedom isn’t FREE.

And then there’s the viewpoint that when something is free we value it less. For instance, I charge for my guitar classes, including the women’s groups I teach on Thursday mornings that feel more like book clubs than lessons. We really do have a good time together. I don’t need to feed my family with the money I make teaching. It’s not wholly essential to our existence. And there was a time when I did not charge for these classes. But here’s what happened when it was FREE: My students stopped coming regularly, at least stopped making it a priority. And they practiced less. I found, early on, that we give credit to that which costs us. If I have actual money in something I feel like I need to commit. Funny how money has that power over us. It’s not evil, it’s just how it works for us at this time in our eternal existence. 

I sometimes think they should charge $1000 for a Book of Mormon. Right now anyone anywhere can get one absolutely free. It’s our answer to the call to flood the world with the Gospel of Christ. But when things are free we tend, at least we spiritual weaklings, to be complacent about them. If the book that carries more pure scripture than any other should cost us a pretty penny, and we had to sincerely sacrifice to give it a place in our homes, then might we treasure it more? I don’t know, I’m just wondering.

So now I have to force myself to finish up today’s Lent Writing and move my body out to the garage where there are roughly twenty boxes of random stuff waiting for me to sort through them. Really, I should just tell Dave to take it all to DI. Or, as another option, to list them on the KSL Classifieds FREE section. Ugh!