Hindsight, Opportunity Cost, and Mr. Regret

I was engaging in a bit of year-end reflection the other day. As usual, since reaching age 50 or so, my reflections quickly began to leap back multiple years, and then decades. And also as usual, my old friend Mr. Regret stopped in for a visit.

Don’t get the wrong idea. This is not a “negative” post. I’ve learned that Mr. Regret can only visit for as long as I let him. His visits might be more frequent now, but they’re shorter.

If we had conversations, they would go sort of like this.

Regret: Wow, look at all those great family trips you never went on! No way to do it now.

Me: (Rolls eyes) Do you have anything new to say?

Regret: (Smugly) Nobody on their deathbed ever said, “I wish I’d spent more time writing blog posts.”

Me: I’m not really sure that’s true. They might have said, “I wish I had done more writing,” so, close enough. But back to my question: Do you have anything new to say?

Regret: You know, if you’d been more aggressive about outreach while you were a pastor—

Me: —You clearly don’t have anything new to say. Nice of you to visit, but we’re not having tea. Let me help you with your coat and hat. Here’s your cane. Good day to you, sir! (Mr. Regret is very stylish in a 19th century sort of way. He doesn’t actually need a cane. As you can see, I know him well!)

Paradigm Shift

Today, when Mr. Regret stopped by, I had a thought as the door closed behind him. Life as we know it is jam-packed with opportunity cost. That means it’s pretty much packed with regret, if you look at the missed opportunities.

For those unfamiliar with the opportunity cost concept, a story—probably not an interesting one, but it might help. I remember the actual day I first learned the concept of opportunity cost. I’m sitting in a college macroeconomics class hearing a lecture. The lectures in this course are like long stretches of “So what?” punctuated by explosions of, “Woah, my life will never be the same!”

Opportunity cost was one of those mind-blowing paradigm shift moments. The prof (I think Markle was his name?) was talking about investment, business decisions, and the like, but his illustrations of the concept got me seeing it in a bigger way.

The idea is this: When you invest your capital in a project, not only is the money gone, but the opportunity to do something else with it is also gone.

At the time, the paradigm shift was realizing that major decisions in life are like that. “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood…” Whichever road you choose, the opportunity to go down another is gone.

It took some years for the rest of that paradigm shift to fall into place. It’s this: Every minute of life carries opportunity cost. We don’t usually know what the cost even was, but what if I’d spent that minute reading rather than praying, or talking to someone rather than writing, or eating something rather than going somewhere? Each minute is one opportunity realized and another gone forever.

So, here’s the point—well, one of them.

Regrets

Those who approach end-of-life and say “I have no regrets” are just not paying attention. Oh, they might only mean, “I feel pretty good about how it all turned out, and I can’t think of anything that would have certainly made it all turn out better.” That’s sensible. But literally no regrets? That’s delusional.

But I have a second point, and this is why I keep Mr. Regret’s visits so short.

There’s no sense beating yourself up about lost opportunities. Lost opportunities are a built-in part of used opportunities. To use a cliché, they’re two sides of the same coin. You can’t have one without the other.

Even if you spent an entire day lying in bed doing nothing, you took the opportunity to spend a day lying in bed doing nothing. You didn’t just lose the opportunity to do all the other things you could have done.

And once in a while, a day spent loafing is priceless! We really never know what impact that may have had on other opportunities faced the day after.

So, I need to look back with mystery and humility in mind.

Mystery

Life is full of mystery, and we can’t spend all our energy trying to optimize opportunity cost. We simply don’t know enough to be fully confident of the best way to spend this or that hour. We know even less about how the long-term trade-offs would work out for choices like spending time with this person vs. that one, applying for this job vs. that one, taking this class vs. that one, or attending this church vs. that one.

And if we let ourselves look back at every lost opportunity as a real loss—a bottom line decrease in life-value and life-meaning—we’ll just drive ourselves to despair.

The truth is, I don’t know what would have happened if I’d chosen a different major in college, taken that trip instead of staying home, handled countless family decisions differently, or made this or that leadership decision differently. We don’t really know what the true, ultimate opportunity cost of any decision is.

We know the unused opportunity itself is a cost, but we don’t really know what that opportunity was worth in all the ways that matter most in life. Outcomes are just too complex. Things like happiness, contentment, and a deep sense of meaning can’t really be tracked like that.

Theology, then.

Don’t ever let Romans 8:28 become a mere cliché to you (and I’m talking to myself here, too). This is awesome truth: for those in Christ, it all works together for good—including even our mistakes and sins. No, that doesn’t mean we should sin so there will be more grace! (I smile at how quickly the Apostle Paul thought of that—Romans 5:20-21 then Romans 6.)

It means that we rightly ponder our steps (Prov 4:26) but really have no idea how they’ll “work together for good”—yet know that they certainly will (Prov 16:9). The One who has begun the good work in us is going to keep doing it, until it’s done (Phil 1:6). He is relentless and unfailing.

Humility

A little humility can bring so much joy in life. Ponder Psalm 131:1 and what follows. There is great peace in recognizing that the ultimate value of the opportunities we took, and the ones we didn’t, is a matter “too great and too marvelous” for us. As Moses preached, “the secret things belong to the Lord” but we do know what we really need to (Deut 29:29).

Fewer words are more humbling than those of James here:

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. (Jas 4:13–14)

So, as a new year begins and we look back over the year(s) past, let’s give Mr. Regret a few minutes. Welcome him in and see if he has any wisdom to offer. There could be something to learn. But don’t let him stay long.

Opportunity cost is a feature of being alive, and every opportunity lost is another one gained—the value of which only God really knows.