Day 2: The Beauty is in the Opportunity Cost

The first time I came across the idea of opportunity cost was in High School. I was year 11, doing NCEA (haven’t wrote this word NCEA nor said in years!) I took as many subjects as I can in the sciences and maths. One of them was of course the still fascinating subject of economics! Opportunity cost is the potential forgone benefit from choosing one alternative over another. The value of the “next best alternative” (from google and a little of what is left in my head).

I started to think a lot more about the idea of opportunity cost as I graduated and began working. I was just realising that there was an opportunity cost at every corner I turn. I wasn’t actively thinking about the concept but I was living it. Which city to move to, which job to take? Pros and cons, the potential benefit I must forgo, the fact that I can’t choose everything all at once. How I really wished I could. Knowing there was some good out there that I could have enjoyed, but I cannot because of physical and temporal limitations at one point made me uneasy, as if somehow I should be above the laws of physics. I think in another words, I was not ready to accept the conditions of the real world. The era of quasi-reality that school years have granted me was over.

If the idea of opportunity cost made me a little discontent in the past, now I see it differently. What I realised is this. There is beauty in choosing one thing and letting go of all the other options. Like when you marry, you are saying, ‘no one else, but you’ even though there are 7 billion others. That person, that job, that pathway, that I chose was the result of my commitment not to commit to anything else but dedicate my efforts and attention solely to that which was chosen. I am on this path because I decided not to pursue all the other paths. Because even though it’s not perfect, I decided that this is the one I’d like to walk on.

I want to learn while I have the appetite. I want to question while I have the curiosity. I can’t know everything, and I can’t learn everything. So what will I choose to know and learn? Answering these questions is a work in progress for me. But I think I’m getting better. I wish I could write a little more clearly for you guys reading but my head is very hazy and I need to go to bed (yes, this is a pathetic excuse for the poor writing hehe. Bear with me, I might be a tiny bit better at the end of this challenge). Good night everyone, good night.