Are two different things.

Businessman Mark Johnston is suing a Las Vegas casino after losing half a million dollars whilst drunk – the casino kept plying him with free drinks, allegedly.

An interesting news-story on the radio this morning, as I happened to be reading some Dan Ariely, who has studied the effects of something FREE! on people:

‘Zero is not just another discount.  Zero is a different place.
The difference between two cents and one cent is small.  But
the difference between one cent and zero is huge.’

If so, then then there’s both an upside and downside to FREE!  The upside is, offer something good for people free, like health screening, and people will be far more likely to accept, over against a reduced rate for this of, say, five pounds.

The downside is, people are blinded by FREE!, making decisions not in their best interest.

All of which made me wonder.  Maybe not everything that is easy in life is the bargain we think it is – effort-FREE! or pain-FREE! – and we need to stop and take a closer look.  It might well be the difficult and more costly choice offers the freedom we seek, the thing we really want.

That’s the downside, but the upside of easy may be how, when we’re living closely to our talents and passions, and an idea for what to do next comes to mind easily and effortlessly, then the next step might well be the one we must take.

It’s worth taking a closer look.