"I'm So Paid"

"You paid some way for everything that was any good. I paid my way into enough things that I liked, so that I had a good time. Either you paid by learning about them, or by experience, or by taking chances, or by money" (pg 152). Deep! Hemingway obviously had a point to make by devoting a whole page to the concept that "the bill always [comes]" to those who have anything good. There is always some sort of expense or giving back that has to be done in return for an achievement or happy moment. Jake poses the philosophy that "maybe if you found out how to live in [the world] you learned from that what it was all about." This philosophy carries with it so many levels! First, there's the concept that by experience, one becomes wiser. Second, if we achieve through an "exchange of values" so to speak, then is there ever a point we stop making achievements? I mean, there's only so much of ourselves or our money we can give. There are those that give, and there are those that take. But here, it's plain to see that a balance between giving and taking must exist to make the exchange recognizable and worthy of happiness.