Opportunity costs in life
- Magical Mindful Living
- Oct 31, 2025
- 3 min read
Story of evolution.
Last Thursday me and my friend were discussing about personnal finance. And a term which frequently came up was an opportunity Cost. It is hard to understand but evolutionary in nature. We just have to look at a slide of dirty water to understand what it means. Imagine a drop of water taken from a natural source, looked through a magnifying glass. It was two decades ago in biology class we did that experiment, and saw various unicellular creatures. Amoeba, specifically. They were just blobs of water engulfed with a membrane, with some organelles inside. It was fascinating to watch them. So how do these creatures, who are living fossils of our evolutionary tree teach us about opportunity cost?
If you stare at an amoeba for sometime you would see it gently moves. Using its own volume, and energy it pushes new limbs out into unknown envornment. Infact as the total volume inside its membrane remains the same, it has to involute some part of its body to do this. And often it is the opposite side which it wants to move. That there is our evidence of opportunity cost. Consider what it means. Amoeba wants to move forward, to find food in new territories. But it cannot move in every direction at the same time. It has to give up all other opportunities when it has taken a step to move in one direction. This happens as it is limited by its own membrane which keeps everything together. Consider this to a journey of a man or women through time.
Whenever we are given a choice in life, deliberately or willingly we do this by saying no to the other options. Following are examples.
Opportunity costs in life
When you move forward, you say no to moving in all other directions.
When you pursue a one career, you say no to all other careers out there which you could have pursue.
When you chose a partner you say no to others who are potential future partners.
When you turn on the TV you say no to reading a book.
When you chose to go to a party instead of studying you say no to potential long term rewards.
When you say yes to cigarettes and Alcohol, you say no to a healthy future.
When you get angry, you say no to a peaceful mind.
When you say yes to apple stock, you say no to all other 499 companies in S&p 500 and everything else in the market.
How to avoid opportunity costs?
As you can see, opportunity costs are unavoidable in life. It is a part and parcel of every natural life. Every journey we have ever taken, every choice we have ever made in the past have changed your story, not by minute margins but by massive deviations. As opportunity costs are high some live regrettable lives worrying over their missed opportunities in the past. But here is a thought for you who are worrying. Opportunity costs which made you regretted in the past are unique for you. It had made you the person you are today. But the moment you stop reading this article you are going to choose something to do. I am not sure what it is. Maybe you would scroll through random articles throughout this blog. Maybe you would want to know who and what "magical mindful living" is. Maybe you wanna eat something or drink a cup of tea. But whatever you choose I can gurentee you it will have consequences which you can fail to recognise, as opportunity costs. So be wise to spend time to decide which direction you wanna go, as you will have to use limited resources called your mind and body into this, like an Amoeba does on a petri dish.
Take your time to make a wise choice, and prepared to take a step back and change your direction early if things seems to be not working out. Maybe you would survive enough until you replicate yourself if you just do that, to continue the illusion of persistent life on the planet.
There is awareness of opportunity cost enough to make FoMO a studied mental health concern.