I have been thinking about opportunity costs as a concept a lot over the last several years. I was amazed to find that I can’t find where I have written about it. It is a really powerful camouflaged threat to happiness that many don’t realize. I sure didn’t for most of my life. It may take either unnatural wisdom or tons of meditation-type work or more commonly a crisis to bring this cost to our attention.
What are opportunity costs? It is basically the implicit costs associated with any decision or action (or inaction or indecision). If I decide to go for a walk I cannot also paint my house or trade stocks. If you go on a date with Tim you can’t also work late or go on a date with Mark instead. The clearest example for me is from finance. If I invest in a particular stock I forgo some safety, trading that for potential profit. Or being a Pacific Northwesterner, if I hike all summer in the Cascades I cannot simultaneously explore Scotland in the summer or get my yard in shape.
Okay, enough obvious stuff. Where can we find the opportunity costs that we are paying likely without realizing it? For me it seems that they often reside in the space between “normal and excessive”. For example, I have always gravitated towards hypervigilance. I understand why, it was a coping mechanism for survival rooted in the outdated existential threats I felt early in life. Being vigilant is good, being hypervigilant isn’t. Can I personally ever feel that 99.5% odds of safety is good enough? How many years am I shaving off my life by worrying excessively about reducing the odds of injury or loss from 0.5% to 0.2%? Is it worth it? Why stop at 0.2%? Remember, going from 99.8% to 99.9% safety requires reducing the uncertainty by 50%! Wrapped up in this is of course the false belief that we are safe or that time is infinite or that we are really in control of much anyway. So many mirages.
As I type this I am trying so desperately hard to not look at the news, not get my laptop all loaded up to buy or sell things in our retirement portfolio as the world awaits the FOMC decision on interest rates. Would worrying about it and getting all ready to act cost me a day of my life? A week? Am I really so full of hubris to think that I would even do the “right” thing anyway? Is there a right thing?
Having children, moving abroad, taking up a new sport, buying a car, shaving your head, everything makes everything else more or less likely. We cannot walk multiple paths at the same time. If I go left at a fork I can’t also go right. And there is an entire other life down that right path. Maybe flip a coin? Maybe close your eyes? Maybe call a friend? Maybe just breathe and forgive yourself? Maybe volunteer at a food bank? Maybe go for a walk? Maybe forgive yourself as you breathe calmly and deeply while walking to your nearest food bank to give so as to receive?
