Opportunity Costs

Opportunity costs is an economics term. In order to gain one thing, you inevitably must sacrifice something else. For example, if you price shop at several locations, you save money but you sacrifice time. Also, if you want to invest in a C.D. or mutual fund, you sacrifice the ability to access your money freely to pay for current purchases.

I believe there are opportunity costs to most things, if not everything.

Tonight in the Humble Bean, I was challenged with opportunity costs. A friend wanted to have a meaningful discussion about something that had been on his mind. This was fine with me and I was happy to have a chat. But the ENTIRE time, my mind was elsewhere. No, it's not the early stages of A.D.D. It's just that I'm so wrapped up in my own crap that I couldn't sacrifice my "mental time" for the sake of his situation.

I don't want to pass the blame, but the events of today just consumed my mind and I couldn't let it go. Plus, there was visual stimulation directly tied to what I was thinking about. So I was obviously distracted. It was very hard to turn my eyes and my mind away.

After submitting this post, I decided to listen to The Calling and as I hit the play button, iTunes chose to play "Surrender". So I added the lyrics later but they fit best here.

"Now she's calling
And it hurts me to go
Away from my favorite addiction
There's no way that she'll ever know..."

It is like an addiction for me, and probably for most of us, to put aside our own situation when someone is in need of our attention. There's no way my friend would ever had known I wasn't fully invested in the conversation because I was able to fake it but I definitely felt guilty.

It's not like I didn't know about my focusing problems before today. The main difference is that this time I realized that by sacrificing for someone else, they in turn feel better about sacrificing for you.

This needs to happen everywhere with every relationship: with a spouse, g/f, b/f, friends, parents, siblings, God and even the earth.

What can you sacrifice for the benefit of someone or something else?