Everything in Life has a Price

…a consequence that we deserve for each of our deeds

By Apolinario Villalobos

Every deed that we do consciously has a price. It is the consequence that we deserve for each of our actions. Since young, we need not be told that telling a lie is bad, or hitting a friend can hurt him physically. By telling a lie, the conscience is bothered which can be carried on as we advance in age. By hitting a friend, he is expected to retaliate, so that we get the same hurt.

When young people get curious so they indulge in drugs, they become addicts and later become a nuisance to the society, hence, ostracized, viewed by others with disgust. If the parents failed to carry out their responsibility in rearing their children properly, the price they get is the latter’s disrespect, and the proverbial pain in the neck, for constant problems that their children give them.

Because citizens of a country sell their vote during elections, the price they get is a bunch of corrupt officials who steal from the government’s coffer – the people’s money. Add to that the instability that the elected corrupt officials give to the government system, especially economic, resulting to the people’s deprivation.

War is the price for the different nations’ greed for expanded territory. It is the price for the zealots’ or fanatics’ desire to impose their religious belief to other people who resist by all means. It is also the consequence of connivance among strong nations to control weak ones. While pockets of it are happening now in many parts of the world, it is also looming over contested areas that at the moment, are enjoying volatile peace….needing just a single spark to explode.

Devastation of Mother Nature is the price of recklessness and greed in many forms. Forests are denuded for timber that man needs for his comfort. Hills and mountains are pockmarked with diggings for minerals and gems to satisfy his vanity. Fish trawlers deplete oceans of breeding fishes, resulting to deprivation and hunger.

Pollution is the price of progress. Not only is the atmosphere ripped open but its tranquility, as well, is seriously disturbed . Endless line of cars are spilled out by factories – cars that emit residue of fossil fuel 24/7, fattening the pockets of manufacturers at the expense of mankind’s health, and the earth’s deterioration due to the effect on its atmosphere.

Man is practically committing a self-annihilation! The suffering that he is enduring today is the ultimate price that he pays for his vanity, greed and pride!