When you ask most people what their price truly is, you can expect a flowery speech about doing what is right, standing behind your convictions and other basic bullcrap stories that explain the speakers have a moral compass that prevents them from being bought and sold........ Again, insert the word - bullshit.
You have a price....but it is quite possible the world has not yet permitted you to understand how costly freewill truly is. Do you believe in God....are you a Christian? Let me remind you when Jesus walked the earth he was closer to 12 men that any one else and we all know how that worked out? Imagine picking 12 men upon which you will use as a foundation of a new religion, and you are betrayed.
At the time of Jesus the earth's population was estimated at no more than 300 million people, out of millions of people he narrowed down his followers to a core group of 12 men.......and he was betrayed by Judas Iscariot for 30 pieces of silver......($25,000 in today's money)
Would $25,000 buy you?
Have you ever lied to save yourself.....or maybe a friend? The lie you told....was your price. Your lie to avoid a consequence tells the price that will buy your credibility. How did you feel afterwards....?
What is my price...... I don't know how to answer that question. In years gone by there are examples in which my silence doomed another person's fate.... Hmm, was that my price, or did I just not care enough about the person to speak up in their defense....? The answer might change every time I answer it depending upon my frame of mind at the time.....
Have you made hard decisions? I think the hardest decision I ever made was to let a man die. To speak up and say, don't try to save him.....let him go. I made my decision, took one last look at his face, then turned and walked away. That was years ago, and till this day I have never let myself second guess my decision.... The bottom line is you pay a price whether you sell your soul or not.....
I had a few beers with a man in the 1990's and listened as he begged me to believe him. The back story is a suspect in police custody somehow had a handcuff key..... Officers could have died, and how did a man in jail got a key.....well there were not a lot of possibilities.
I spent a good deal of time with this man...... I listened to him tell the story many times over the course of a year. In turn he listened to me cry in my beer over a love gone bad, trying to give me advice or at least trying to get me laid and move on......It was a horrible time in my life, and he stood by me..... or was it all a lie?
When he talked eventually it was always about the "key" declaring his innocence. With each telling of the story I was focused, did any portion of the story (no matter how minute) change. Liars often have trouble keeping a story straight..... Honest men can normally tell the same story each time, but so can GREAT liars........
None of the investigators believed him.....we all heard the story a thousand times, and the amount of eye rolls behind his back were off the chart..... I wanted to believe him, but his forehead always turned red as he talked....just like it did when he was laying in bed talking to his wife on the phone, with a girl from the hotel bar nuzzled up next to him.....
I worked many times with this man, situations in which I had to trust my life that he didn't have a price..... I don't think I ever truly trusted him, even after he swore on his kids' lives that he was innocent.
Did he have a price......hmm, well he paid a price. The official story is he stuck a 45 in his mouth and pulled the trigger.... the highest price you can pay. Was that an omission of guilt.......or was it the only way he saw out. If I believed him and had spoken out, could it have turned the tide.... (guess we'll never know)
My price..... I don't think my price is a dollar amount. Keeping my family safe is the only thing that might motivate me. Even then be careful what you do less you discover your own price.
So what is your price? Do you think my "friend" sold his soul along with a handcuff key? Should I have believed him.....
