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Arachnophilia is one example of a new software distribution system developed by the author. In the CareWare system, you don't owe any money to anyone. By the way, if someone made you pay for Arachnophilia, you were cheated. You should go back and demand a refund. Arachnophilia is freely available on the Internet and, because I own the copyright, no one has the right to make you pay for it except me, and I'm not going to.

But you are not off the hook yet. The "Payment" for a CareWare program is not monetary. You have to make a different kind of payment altogether. Let me explain.

Most Americans are totally dissatisfied with everything. It is too hot, too cold, too wet, too dry. If we have a free day, we are unhappy because we don't have two free days. And just about the time we figure out that we are supposed to appreciate the world as it is, we fall over and die.

So here's your payment for Arachnophilia:

Imagine you have only two hours to live:

• Is there something important you have to say to someone, something you might regret not having said? If you were to die, would that person always wonder what you really thought or felt?
• Is there a pretty spot you have always wanted to visit, sit under a tree, whatever?
• Have you ever experienced the shock of noticing how beautiful ordinary things are, once it dawns on you that you might not be around very long?

If you are an old person (like me):

• Do you speak to young people in a way that they will be encouraged to grow up and expect to be happy and productive?
• When you correct a young person, do you ask yourself "Is this mostly for my benefit, or mostly for his?"

If you are a young person:

• Do you try to be patient with old people, even though most of us are complete morons?
• Do you try to live in the world as though you belonged here, as though what you do matters to everyone, to the world itself, to you?
• Do you appreciate the small, free beauties of life, and not expect to buy anything very important?

Look at this list. If you already belong to this list, if this list already reflects your behavior and values, then you already own your copy of Arachnophilia. In a sense, you owned it before it was written.

If you don't feel a kinship with the statements in the list, then please do one or more of the things listed there. Maybe change how you talk to a young person, or someone whose life would be improved if you related to him or her differently. Or just allow a sense of wonder to re-enter your life, a sense that nothing is deserved and everything contains hidden beauty. And that sometimes beauty is not so much hidden as unobserved.

I would like it if you lived your entire life as though each day was your last, as though every small action mattered, in the way that it does when you've run out of time. But I am a realist -- if you do that for just one day, one day of saying the important things, of performing the kindnesses that naturally occur to us when each day might be our last, then you will have paid me for Arachnophilia.

I don't ask this because there is some definition of good behavior, some correct religious or philosophical viewpoint. I ask it precisely because there isn't such a viewpoint. We are all free agents, we get to choose. In fact, we must choose -- it's dangerous to let others choose for us. And no one gets to tell anyone else how to behave -- unless, of course, one is "selling" software using the CareWare system.