There is something about the human mind that rejects the free and the easy. We do not trust it, we do not believe in it, we always wait for the other shoe to drop. I suppose the problem is that we keep thinking of things in pairs of opposites, instead of taking the cycles as they come. When good things happen, we worry about a catch. We think in terms of the monkey's paw, and that's why we just do not see.

Nothing is free, that much is true. Everything is paid for. Take the Christian concept of salvation, for instance. It is free. It is a promo. All you have to do is take it, and it is yours. And that fact alone makes it the hardest to believe in.

But while salvation may be free for us, it's only because Someone already paid. And the fact remains that if you sign up for it, it won't always be that easy. It gets harder later. Then easy. Then hard. It's a cycle, not the Twilight Zone version of the Monkey's Paw. (That's just an example. Or maybe the first sentence of my upcoming opus called "The Zen of Christianity. Yes, I'm kidding. Oh wait, I already said that in a previous post.

Of course, it is a commitment, all promos are. If someone pays your way, there is an obligation. Especially when it is a price you yourself cannot afford. But that's another entry. So is the whys and the wherefores of it, the fine print, the little things the oversimplified tracts don't discuss. Just so you know. Just so you don't cancel your subscription too early and miss out on the rest. But the signing up part, that's easy.

Like my job. It is so easy, it gives me a headache. All I have to do is come in, and that's the hardest part.

The same is true with the job. The hard work was done earlier. Some of it was even done by me. That's why it's easy now. It'll get harder later, but that's not payment for now, it's the prepayment for the next tough time. That is the way of it. That is the way it should be.

Living is a great job, even if there are idiots who try to buy everything in the world and think that world domination includes that bright place in your head where your mind used to be. But the point isn't the wages at the end, or the work at the beginning, or how much more the other guy who was hired (born, to you people who don't get metaphors, you know who you are) after you gets.

The point is just to show up.

Everything else follows.

And the bill, at the end, is never as high as you were afraid it would be. And it always will be a bargain compared to what you got.

And I have no point, really. It's just that earlier, I read this:

"There are many things to see, unwrapped gifts and free surprises. The world is fairly studded and strewn with pennies cast broadside by a generous hand. But- and this is the point- who gets excited by a mere penny? If you follow one arrow, if you crouch motionless on a bank to watch a tremulous ripple thrill on the water and are rewarded by the sight of a muskrat paddling from its den, will you count that sight a chip of copper only, and go on your rueful way? It is dire poverty indeed when a man is so malnourished and fatigued that he won't stoop to pick up a penny. But if you cultivate a healthy poverty and simplicity, so that finding a penny will literally make your day, then, since the world is in fact planted in pennies, you have with your poverty bought a lifetime of days. It is that simple. What you see is what you get."

Annie Dillard, from "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek."

Merry Christmas.