Sunday, November 9, 2008

Opportunity Cost



My first sememster in college I took a business management class. I remember coming across a vocublary word "opportunity cost". For some reason it seems to be the only thing I can remember from that class. Today I was visiting my little sisters blog and read the news that she and her husband have a great opportunity to go to London for two years for a work related job. Suddenly I felt jealous and wished it were me. I know that I probably will never travel father than a days drive. Then as I read on she talked about having to stop the adoption process that they have just begun. She talked about having to decide weather they should go or not. The words opportunity cost came to mind. Each of us have to decide in this life. Most of us turn to prayer for the answers. Sometimes the things we choose to do lead us away from other choices. I suddenly felt like although I will never travel the world over it is because I have chosen to have six beautiful children. My lot in life is to raise them. A blessing that some don't have. I really feel that it is important to not compare ourselves to others. Sometimes it may look as though they are more blessed, but in reality we all are blessed just in different ways. I am excited that Emily and Brent get the opportunity to travel. I hope they can find opportunities to adopt in London. Maybe if I starve the kids and scrimp on the food budget I will get to come visit!

5 comments:

Camille Farias said...

I know how you feel. Emily and I have an ongoing joke that despite the awesome places she gets to live in while I am rotting away in the boringest place on earth, I happen to own 2 houses while she will probably not be able to own a house at all for several more years. We decided that she's not allowed to get jealous about my excessive real estate if I don't get jealous over her living in cool cities and countries. We figure that our family averages out that way, and our vacations are more exciting (when I go there) and comfortable (when she comes here). Throw your kids in the average, too, and I think we might be on to something here.

melissa said...

Ah, Tiffani. I know how you feel, my dear. My thoughts exactly. In fact, I just got done reading Emily's blog and had all these very thoughts in my conversation with myself. Then I clicked over and read your post and decided that great minds must think alike. You couldn't have worded it any differently had you looked directly into my head and seen my own thoughts on the matter.

Jake and I have this conversation every once in a while when we get to talking about others we know who get to do things we only get to dream about. We talk about all the things we "gave up" in order to have our kids. But then we always come back to the conclusion that, although there is so much that we yearn to do that we'll most likely never get the chance to do, we get to have our beautiful children and raise them and therein lies our treasure and so we need to make all the awesome memories we can with our kids, since we can't afford to travel all over making memories for ourselves.

Brent and Emily said...

Good job, guys. I need you all to keep doing things that I don't get to do so that our family average is even :)

Tiff, My thoughts exactly on opportunity costs. We do get to do some pretty cool stuff, but for the past 3 years haven't been able to do the one thing on the top of our to-do list, have babies. So think of us being able to move to London as our consolation prize. This decision would have been infinitely harder to make had we had the 2 kids we planned on having by now. And I know kids get crazy and are really hard sometimes but I'd give this all up in a heartbeat if the choice was London or staying up all night with a screaming, sick baby of my own.

melissa and nathan said...

Tiffani,
You are awesome. (I seem to say that often)! I have been having this conversation as well with friends. I am so lucky and blessed to be at home and with my three (soon 4) rugrats. Some days are extremely difficult, others are heaven!
Thanks for staying so optimistic! On the hard days I seriously think of you and your happy smile!

camfox said...

Tiffani, It's Camille from Kerman. I found you through Melissa Thomsen. This post reminded me of a poem President Hinckley quoted:

You are the trip I did not take;
You are the pearls I cannot buy;
You are my blue Italian lake;
You are my piece of foreign sky.