Let’s talk about how much something is worth. Is it how much you paid for it? Is it how much the ingredients themselves cost? What about labor cost? How does that factor in?
All these things matter, to some extent, but at the same time, none of them do. Once something is in your life, it only has whatever value it adds to your life. That depends on you.
Unfortunately, our brains have something to say about that. When you pay a lot for something, even if in the end it hurts you, your brain wants to make it work. The opposite is also true. When you get something for free, you don’t care about it as much.
This was just exemplified for me when I came to be the new owner of a free pizza. Brand new, perfectly fine, deliciously edible pizza. Instead of eating it right then, I put it in the fridge because I wanted to cook. The next night I went out to eat. The next I ordered in. And so on, because the value of this pizza was what I had paid for it: nothing.
At least, that’s what part of me wanted to say. Instinctively, the pizza wasn’t worth anything to me. I didn’t ask for it, I didn’t pay for it.
Wasting this pizza didn’t take money out of my pocket in the same way buying a pizza and not eating it would have. Wasting this pizza didn’t cost me a penny… in the exact same way finding $5 on the street and then accidentally throwing it away didn’t cost me a penny. I didn’t lose anything I wouldn’t have otherwise, but I did lose something.
This time it was only a pizza. Next time, who knows what it will be.