There are so many things in life that we just don’t think about.
So many physical things that exist that we don’t think about. So many phrases in our language that we don’t think about.
Cost of Living.
The term implies that we don’t deserve to live. We don’t deserve to be alive. So much for the pro-choice crowd. Once the fetus is born, its on its own.
Self help gurus and the toxic positivity crowd like to talk about what a statistical miracle it is to be alive. Good for content, great for someone whose doing well in life to feel even better about themselves. That concept smacks into a brick wall of the externally, measurable, physical reality of any capitalist controlled civilization.
The paramedic will save your life and tell you that it was a miracle, then the clerk sends you a bill that puts you into medical bankruptcy. The politician tells you it’s a miracle to be alive in the richest country in the history of the world, then votes against universal healthcare.
Cost of living. Trade ⅔ of your life in the service of being to survive the other ⅓ while you’re not working. Five days on for two days off. Fifty weeks on for two weeks off. If you’re a worker with a white collar maybe. What is a weekend? What is a holiday? Sick days? Suck it up and turn your gear on the machine plebe.
Cost of living. You mean the mental and emotional toll that simply existing, maintaining sanity and decorum takes on us? You mean the unanswerable questions about existence? What is consciousness? What happens when we die?
The consequences of the body decaying as we get older as the positive alternative to dying young? The feeling of being alone in rooms full of strangers? Wondering if anyone will ever really get us? Not knowing who we can actually trust? Why do bad things happen to good people? Why does absolute power corrupt absolutely? What does living up to my potential mean? Are we alone in the universe? Isn’t there a risk of dying at any moment? That cost of living?
No, not the immaterial cost of living. The other one. The material cost of living. The one that says if you don’t trade your time for money often enough, for enough quantity, you’ll be left to die of dehydration and starvation on the streets. That cost of living.
Anarchy Journal Constitutional 
Not that I’m into solutions — I try to steer clear of the opinion-fest of the market — but to avoid the trap of work/life/earning a living, it’s high time we developed a contrary narrative, surely, to the decayed one that you articulate. In short, we need to transform our supposed thought leaders (a joke of a term) into radicals. I wonder if we can weave a spell over them as they and their cohort appear to have done so well over the rest of us? Take care Julian