Opportunity Cost
4000 weeks, that is the approximate length of the average human life span. When put into such numerical context, it sounds somewhat frightening to comprehend the outrageous brevity of human life, but it also puts into perspective the criticality of its best use. However, the paradox of being human is that even though we are finite creatures, we are somehow counterintuitively and biologically wired to live as though we are infinite. We are finite in the amount of time we have here and finite in the amount of time we’re awake daily and able to do meaningful work or foster meaningful relationships. Even more perplexing is that we are finite in how much control we can exert over our limited time, that is - “nobody knows what can happen in the very next moment”. We are all fundamentally vulnerable to the event that we can exit this realm at any moment.
Interestingly, a lot of what we do and how behave as humans (primarily with regards to how we manage our time) is based on emotional avoidance. It is as though we are created with the inherent disposition to try to avoid confronting the fact of being perishable items with a finite amount of shelf-life. We avoid feeling our finitude. Our mortality prefers to ignore the fact that our lack of immortality is our most pressing concern. Instead, we continue to swim frantically against a current whose strength we can never match. While some may approach this realisation with fear or wanting to do everything humanly possible in their set time. Confronting and feeling our finitude is the precursor to doing extraordinary things with the time we’re given. Embracing and living the reality of our finitude frees us of the impossible quest of trying to fit into every construct and expectation of the world.
Every waking day, we are confronted with the salient anxiety of choosing what to give our precious time to, knowing that whatever we choose only gets done by forgoing other things we could potentially be doing. It means neglecting or sacrificing other competing priorities. Every great inventor or idealist that ever did anything previously thought unimaginable or impossible did so deliberately understanding that it came at the opportunity cost of sacrificing other things in pursuit of that which they deemed most important. However, it appears the average human doesn’t understand the concept of finality, hence we defer what ought to be important such as our happiness to the future (e.g I will be happy when….), validating a false and foolhardy assertiveness that we will live forever.
Everything we choose to invest our time in happens at the expense of other things that could occupy that time, and living in this harsh reality may help us choose wisely how we invest our precious time by focusing only on the pursuit of meaningful work and meaningful relationships. While the idea of “meaningful” is a complex language, everybody knows what “meaningful” means for them. For me it means being in the right place, doing what you ought to be doing and putting to good use your limited amount of time here on earth. It is very easy to get lost in a world without hard edges around it, one that doesn’t have boundaries and unfortunately, that sort of world is more alluring for most including myself hence I write about ideas I grapple with. Whatever you choose to do in each moment, endeavour to make it “meaningful”, knowing it comes at an opportunity cost.
Remember - “You are a perishable item, live accordingly” - Unknown
Peace, Love & Light,