From the book More Language of Letting Go by Melody Beattie: The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life, which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run. --Henry David Thoreau Consider the young man who was doing great in his high school studies, then suddenly started to fall behind. One day, a teacher pulled the young man aside and asked him what happened. The student told him that he had asked his father for a car, and the father told him that if he earned the money, he could have one. The student, being industrious and hard working, went out, got a job, saved the money, and bought the car. But then the car needed insurance, gas, and maintenance, so the student kept the job to keep up the car. The job took up more and more of his time, until finally he began to fall behind in his studies. "Why don't you just get rid of the car?" asked the teacher. "Get rid of the car?" came the reply. "How would I get to my job?&q