Success comes at a price, you’ll be told. The price of success is a phrase you hear a lot. It sounds as if success can only be bought, not earned, for to pay a price is to buy a thing.

Before any one gets carried away and starts calculating the price of success, it may be worthwhile to ask what it means to even say that there is a price for success.

We know there is a price of bread, and rice. There is a price, much higher, of clothing, and shelter. And there is the stratospheric price of luxuries. All these prices are clearly marked on the price tag. And in some places they are willing to bargain. So go do your shopping.

When you’re done buying the items that come with a price tag, we can sit down and negotiate the price of success.

You’re going to tell me, or, if not, I’ll tell you, that success does not come with a price tag. Yet it is expensive; very expensive indeed. Only thing is, we don’t quite know what the price will be.

I hope you noticed that key phrase “will be” at the end of the previous sentence. You’ll notice that it’s in the future tense. There’s a perfectly good reason for that. You see, the price of success is only found out after the fact. You’ll only know after you succeed, or don’t succeed, how dearly it cost you.

And the price that you eventually come to figure out will not be in cash value. It will be in human value. You’ll measure it by the time it cost you, the effort you put in, the trials and tribulations you went through.

But it doesn’t make sense really. First, you rarely ever come to a stage where you can say: “I’ve arrived!” Well, people say it in movies and books. And sometimes people say it in real life. But those who say it in real life never really mean it, because, after saying it they don’t sit back and count their blessings, or dollars. They go on to struggle for a bigger pile to count. So the price isn’t really the final price; it’s only an installment.

To bring this all into perspective, let’s try asking the question: What is the price of life? I don’t mean the price to be born, or the price to just remain alive. I mean the price of living out your entire life. Surely it must run into a very large figure, if it can at all be calculated. Because the price of living out your entire life doesn’t simply include the price of the total food you eat, or the total utilities you consumed, or the total clothing and shelter you needed.

The price would have to include your family, friends, love, joy, and the list would go on to some length. But this is all redundant. We don’t need to ask the price of a full human life. There is, quite simply, no price on it. It is priceless.

I agree. I merely brought it up to show that success is part of life. It is simply what you do in living your life. Getting your daily bread is not success; it is life. Getting your home and furniture is not success; it is life. Getting a car, a bigger house, more luxuries, are all a natural progression of life.

Why separate some part of life, and call it success? Why make a part of your life into a commodity to be priced? Life is just there to be lived, and to be made the best of. There is no need to ask the price. There is no need to think of living as paying a price. You just live, as you draw breath. One step after another.

Having said all this, we are still faced with the fact that there are people out there who are deemed to be successful, and who’ve come to be successful at a certain cost in human life. And if we could be assured of such success we’d gladly pay the price.

It seems that success is not success if there is no price to be paid. Success would lose its appeal if it came too cheaply. But this is the problem with our view, and not with the value of success. If looked at in the right perspective, success may actually be the cheapest to attain. It may simply be that we just refuse to apply the name of success to that which is truly success.

You will find, if you study the lives of people who’ve attained their success at a very high cost, that they too eventually come to realize that what they thought was success was a shell; hollow; without substance; whereas true success always lay right within their grasp, except that they never realized it.

Think well, before you pay an exorbitant price for an imitation.