“Nothing that is important to you ruins anything for anyone else,” said a friend, as we talked about women who hesitate to prioritise themselves over family. I was happy to hear that at that time because it absolved me of a twinge of guilt that I felt over a similar situation.
However, as I pondered over this conversation, I began to question the implications of her words — is there any action that does not have a cost to be paid by the person or other person(s) involved? Can any deed be isolated from, or immune to, intended or unintended repercussions which could hurt someone else? And I realised how wrong I was in lulling myself into a false comfort zone.
Everything we do or don’t do has an opportunity cost that we or someone else, is consciously or unconsciously paying for. Opportunity cost in economics is defined as “what you have to give up to buy what you want, in terms of other goods and services”. It also means “the foregone benefit that would have been derived from an option not chosen”. There is an opportunity cost for everything we do. We pay a price in terms of a task we do not accomplish, a hobby we do not pursue, a relationship we could not nurture, a movie we did not see… when we do something, there is always something else, that we could have done but could not or did not do.
Big sacrifice
We should thus be mindful of our actions and ensure that what we are pursuing is what we really value, because the pursuit leaves countless lost opportunities in its wake. We choose one experience sacrificing all other experiences.
If we chose to watch TV instead of reading a book, we are losing out on more meaningful content for the brain, perhaps. Or when we spend time at work instead of a game with our children, we are losing out on creating a bond with them, before they grow up and fly away. Also time with family may mean neglecting work and thus progress in one’s career! The opportunity cost of any alternative is defined as the cost of not selecting the “next-best” alternative.
As someone has rightly said, “An opportunity lost is the opportunity cost.” A sportsperson who decides to take up a job because of family compulsions, a musician who chases his passion rather than the family business or a family which languishes because the father gives his life for a cause rather than a regular well-paying job — all these are cases where the opportunity cost of the choice or lack thereof is paid by different people in different ways. As Milton Friedman said, “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.” There is a price to be paid for everything and if we decide to pay the price after thought and deliberation, there is a greater chance that you will minimise the loss or ruination that it may cause.
We have all witnessed people getting carried away by the throes of the rising career graph at the cost of family time. Or those who pay the opportunity cost of subsuming oneself for the sake of the family when altruism turns to a sense of betrayal in the blink of an eye. So whichever way we look at it, there is a price to be paid and it does affect you or someone else because of its occurrence. There is no action in short, without a consequence, an equal and opposite reaction, to paraphrase Newton’s laws of motion.
Does this mean that we should be paralysed by this war — “to do or not to do” — waging within us at every stage? Well, that is an impossible scenario and no one will ever advocate that as a solution. As John Maxwell puts it, “the dream is free…but the journey will cost you something.” We make decisions because we weigh the pros and cons of the situation as it exists then, for we know nothing better at that time. This makes it easier in the long run to come to terms with and co-exist with the consequences of one’s actions.
If you make a choice or do not, if you agree or differ, everything has two consequences… getting something as against losing out on something else. Every decision in life has a cost. Even the decision not to make a decision triggers opportunity costs. Since time is a ruthlessly unidirectional and finite commodity, decisions are ultimately a matter of priorities, and may be shaping or ruining something for one or more of the people involved. Each choice thus has a domino effect in our lives to a greater or less extent. And that is why it is extremely important, imperative almost, to think through the options before you take the plunge. As John Greenleaf Whittier puts it poignantly, “For all the saddest words of tongue and pen, the saddest are these, ‘It might have been’”
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