This is something I found myself thinking about over Christmas.
It started with a phrase we hear constantly: the cost of living. The more I sat with it, the more it felt like it was doing more than describing economics. It was shaping how we think about life itself.
The Cost of Living
They call it the cost of living.
As if living were a service,
metered, itemised,
something that ticks quietly upward, while you sleep.
A cost implies a bill.
A bill implies a collector.
So who’s charging,
and why do the same hands,
always seem to reach deeper into the same pockets?
Because living, they say, has become expensive.
As though breath were a commodity,
warmth a luxury add-on,
time with your children an optional extra.
But living isn’t costly.
Surviving is.
Living is slow mornings, shared food.
Laughter that interrupts the plan.
Living is dignity without justification.
Living is not explaining yourself to a spreadsheet.
Yet we’ve learned the phrase well.
We repeat it politely.
We nod as if it were weather,
unfortunate, unavoidable, nobody’s fault.
Strange how the cost rises everywhere,
except where the profits sit.
Strange how belts tighten
but tables never get smaller at the top.
And stranger still,
how this language travels.
In one country it means heating or eating.
In another, it means time you’ll never get back.
Different currencies, same exchange rate:
life for money, or money for life.
At Christmas they’ll speak of resilience.
Of tough choices.
Of managing expectations.
But no child measures wonder in percentages.
No parent tucks in hope with a fiscal forecast.
So maybe the question isn’t,
how much does it cost to live?
Maybe it’s how much living are we willing to lose,
before we stop pretending this is normal.
Because maybe living was never meant to be earned.
And yet, somehow,
we’ve agreed to pay.