The Opportunity Cost of Life

Trade-offs.  Sacrifice.  Compromise.  Opportunity Cost. Scarcity.  All of these concepts can be summarized by the fact that almost every decision that we make in life amounts to valuing one option over another and giving up something to make room for something else.  Some trade-offs are made through conscious, well-thought out decisions whereas others are forced as a result of imposing constraints.  As children, the ultimate winner between multiple options is often determined either through biological necessity or as an imposition of a parent's tastes and preference.  Infants cry and scream to express discomfort which in turn only makes them more uncomfortable and perhaps more inclined to express dissatisfaction in the only way they know how.  And yet, at some point, breath becomes of prime importance over the vocalization of unhappiness.  Young children may want to keep others from playing with their toys so they keep command of all of them.  However, they may then become frustrated by the inability to play with and enjoy one toy while simultaneous trying to hoard and protect all their toys from another invading child.

As suggested above, one difficulty trade-offs pose is that we are forced to make them against our own will.  Making trade-offs flies in the face of "more is better".  If we want to gain greater utility, we should just seek to gain more of whatever makes us happy: more money, more adoration, more stuff, more friends and admirers - the list is endless.The notion of a trade-off is very much the same one that goes into the skill of compromise.  What are you willing to give up in order to get something else that makes you happier?  It goes against our very being to give up ground to another.  Our self preservation instinct pushes us towards selfishness, but our social desire pulls us back towards a more moderate solution.  And yet, even when we think that another person isn't cooperating by compromising, the truth is that they are.  They many not be compromising in a way that satisfies our own needs, but they are necessarily making a trade-off.

Facebook is a perfect example of this notion of trade-offs when it comes to the friend domain.  While I am unaware of any study that has been done to date on this topic (though I'm sure there has been), I would hypothesize that the amount of time an individual spends on Facebook is directly inverse to the amount of time spent building relationships.  Facebook allows us to be more voyeuristic rather than truly facilitating the enrichment of relationships.  The trade-off here is obvious.  We spend time making superficial comments or making others aware that we have seen their post rather than using the tool to deepen or maintain true friendship.  Facebook "stalking" has lost its taboo.  People are becoming less and less shy about admitting that their intelligence on the subject of a particular event or image came from a headline that they found on Facebook.

I have wandered into a horrible digression but one that mimetically represents what happens through exploitation of a natural human curiosity that stems in part of competition and partly from narcissism and a smaller part of genuine interest in the well-being of others.  The latter part mostly relates to the small number of Facebook "friends" who truly meet the definition of friend.  My ultimate interest in the concept and reality of trade-offs is of much greater import than simply the number of inane posts that appear on Facebook and my inability to completely divorce myself from the spectacle that manifests in the up-to-the-second "news" feeds.

As we move through different stages of our life, the opportunity cost of living become more tangible and the necessity of managing the trade-offs more crucial to our own happiness as well as the happiness of others in our lives.  As a young adult from a privileged background, the decisions that we make feel less permanent, less consequential.  Friends, jobs, locations, classes, clothes, images - everything can be modified.  Another option is always waiting in the wings, ripe for the taking.  And yet, it all shapes what we do in the future.  By leaning one way and not another, we set off down one path that may forever change the course of our lives.

The realization of a potential permanence that our decisions can ciment can be both refreshing and frightening.  At certain points in my life, I have either taken a huge leap, relying on inertia to keep me moving forward or restrained myself from taking too many steps down one path without leaving the bread crumbs behind that would allow me to find my way back out.  Perhaps it is ultimately a sign of my own cowardliness.  I'd like to think it's a function of risk-aversion, but sometimes we just need to face up to our weakness.  The trade-off is to never really see ourselves as we truly are.  There is strength is self-reflection and wisdom in evaluating and bearing the costs that come with blazing the most fulfilling path through life.