Opportunity Costs

Being alone for nearly four weeks now has given me plenty of time to think. And for some reason, on Saturday while I was sitting in Mercer Park, I started thinking – a lot – about opportunity costs.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the concept, it comes from economics. Imagine that you have £10, or $10, whichever you prefer (take the £10, it’s worth more). Now imagine that you go to the store and you buy a six-pack of beer with your dough. Now you have beer, and no money. What you cannot do now is buy gas for your car, go out for pizza with friends, or buy the t-shirt at the Gap that you’ve been eyeing. So, from an economic standpoint, all those other options are the “opportunity costs” of buying beer. Basically, it just means that there are lots of other things that you had the opportunity of buying and/or doing that you’ve foregone because of your decision.

But, really, opportunity costs are more than simple economics. I prefer to think of it as trading. We’re always trading something for something else – we trade our time at work for money, we trade our money for food, a basic example. But life is a series of trades, in terms of time, money, energy, relationships, and probably zillions of other ways. What really struck me on Saturday was that I believe that frequently, we really don’t think about what we’re trading. We give up time, energy, and money for a trip to the mall – time, energy, and money that could have been spent in better ways. We fill our days with things, and never stop to think what we could be doing rather than what we are doing. See, it’s all trade-offs, opportunity costs, or whatever else you may want to call it. That time at the mall could have been spent in the park with the kids, or maybe hanging out with friends. The money you spent could have been given to a charity, or invested, or maybe just spent on something better than say, a Big Mac and fries. And once you make the trade, it’s done – there’s no reneging on the deal. (Somebody at this point is bound to point out refunds, I would counter that even so, the time and energy you’ve spent are forever gone, and you’ve also lost the use of the money for whatever period of time between the purchase and the refund.)

Let me make one thing clear – what I’m not saying is that we should never spend money on beer, or on going to the mall, or anything like that. What I am saying is that I think far too often, we fill our lives with these things, like going to the mall, or on just buying “stuff”, and never stop to think about what we could be doing instead. I’m going to close now. I will say that I am just as guilty of this as anyone. But, for today, let me just ask – what are you trading your life for?