The best things I ever did were free. The best concert I ever played was free. The best meal I ever ate was free. The best song I ever heard was free. The best advice I ever got was free. The best night of my life was free. The worst things I ever did cost money.

Somebody decided that everything has to cost something. Somebody decided that if it is free it is not worth anything. That is the biggest lie in the economy. The sunset is free. Nobody charges you to look at the sunset. Nobody puts a toll booth in front of the sunset. The sunset does not have a subscription fee. The sunset is free and it is the most beautiful thing most people will see today and it happens every single day and nobody pays a cent for it.

The public library is the greatest invention in the history of civilization. Not the airplane. Not the computer. The public library. A building full of every book ever written and you can walk in and read any of them and walk out and nobody charges you anything. Andrew Carnegie built seventeen hundred libraries. He was a robber baron who crushed unions and underpaid workers but he built seventeen hundred free buildings full of free knowledge and those buildings changed more lives than his steel mills ever did. The free thing outlasted the expensive thing. The free thing always outlasts the expensive thing.

Public radio is free. You turn on the radio and the signal is there. Nobody asks for your credit card. Nobody asks for your email. Nobody tracks what you listened to and sells it to somebody else. The signal is in the air and the air is free and whoever built a receiver can hear it. That is the most democratic technology in the world. A kid in a room with a twenty dollar radio can hear the same symphony as a billionaire in a penthouse. The signal does not know the difference.

I played on corners for fifty years and I never charged a cover. Not once. The music was free. The hat was on the ground but the hat was optional. You could listen for three hours and put nothing in the hat and I would not say a word because the music was never about the hat. The music was about the corner and the corner was free. The corner is still free. Go stand on one. Nobody will charge you. The permit costs money but the corner does not.

Here is what I know. The things that save you will be free. The song that changes your life will play on a radio you did not pay for. The book that opens your eyes will come from a library you did not build. The conversation that saves your marriage will happen on a walk that costs nothing. The idea that makes you start over will arrive while you are sitting in a park that belongs to everybody. The free thing. That is the thing. The free thing is the thing that matters.