The best things in life are free but I can't afford them

If you're one of those human beings with working eardrums and the mental capacity/training necessary to understand the English language you've no doubt heard the phrase, 'the best things in life are free'. It's a phrase you've probably heard in countless bad pop songs, shrugged off in times of financial woe and embraced in times of giddy childlike joy. It's a phrase most people would agree with, or at least claim to agree for fear of looking shallow and materialistic. It's a phrase I myself might agree with but it's not something that brings me comfort.

I've never had any problem finding money. I realise how punchable I just became by saying that. Here I am syphoning money off of the honest taxpayer in order to fund my beer soaked lazy sitcom watching, guitar playing life and acting as if there's some magical force of nature granting me riches. I realise I'd probably be on the street without all kinds of hardworking people there to support my lazy tuchus but even so, I have never really felt the sting of poverty and have always seemed to have a little more money than I need.

I'm not rich by any means, I don't come from a rich family and was never paid any kind of allowance as a child but I have never really worried about money. I mean, from time to time I have worried about (and continue to worry about) clothing and feeding myself and having a place to live but even in those times I'm comforted by the idea that I could live in some flophouse, eating half a tin of spaghetti hoops a day and wearing second hand clothing donated to the local charity shop by widows of badly dressed men (I already look like I do anyway). This has never seemed so bad to me, with the paltry amount of cash it would take to sustain one's existence I've never really understood just why people worry so much about money. Sure it'd be annoying to lose your HD television or your high speed access to genital mutilation videos but it's not really something to worry about.

The things I worry about are the things I couldn't buy with all the money in the world. I have money piling up around my nipples but the only things I want are the supposedly 'free' things. I want to be able to lie in bed and fall asleep without having to spend an hour or two blocking out thoughts of how I've wasted my life. I want to really connect with other people. I want to be good at something, I want to get back my passion for life. As far as I know none of these things are purchasable with any major credit card or world currency, not even American express.

These things may come to you free and they may come easy, if you're born to receive these things it may seem like you're dispensing some valuable advice when you remind others that, 'The best things in life are free'. The sad fact is that many of us just aren't born to receive these gifts and nothing we can ever do will change that, for some of us the real moral of the tale seems to be, 'The best things in life, you can't even buy them'.

Goddammit, I depressed me.