Oscar Wilde famously said there are two tragedies in life: not getting what you want, and getting it.
Wilde, who was famous for his clever use of paradox, possessed a knack for revealing truth (or kernels of truth) in absurd contradiction. The quip above, which comes from his 1892 play Lady Windermere’s Fan, is a good example.
While the line might sound nonsensical to some, it contains a truth related to one of the most important ideas in economics: opportunity cost.
Wilde’s quote sprang to mind while I was thinking about a friend, a very successful person who until recently led a Fortune 500 company. His story is a familiar one, though one achieved by relatively few.
The American Dream
In the 1990s, after graduating college, my friend joined a shipping company. Year after year he rose higher, and the company grew rapidly. Eventually he became an executive, then he became CEO. He earned millions of dollars every year, traveled around the world, and gave talks to rooms packed full of business leaders. He had achieved the American Dream.
During this time, my friend would have described himself as fulfilled and happy. Yet the work was also taxing. He was away from home a lot, which meant being away from his wife and two children. He had a cabin in the north woods, but rarely had time to use it. He missed family events, including birthday parties and weddings. He never seemed to have time to exercise, to volunteer, or go to the movies with his children.
Then something happened: COVID arrived. Not long afterwards my friend and the company at which he had spent his entire career decided to part ways. (The reasons for this are unknown to me and don’t really matter.)
Losing a dream job would be devastating for many people, and perhaps it was for my friend. But if it was, you never would have known it.
He threw himself into a new life of routine and responsibility. He volunteered on boards of youth organizations. He coached his son’s football team. He attended his daughter’s dance recitals and drove carloads of high schoolers to prom. Twice a week he’d drive a carload of grapplers to practice.
To say these things made my friend happier and more fulfilled is not the point, though I think he did become happier and more fulfilled. The real point is that those around him blossomed in ways that are difficult to overstate.
The organizations on which he served he vastly improved, and his family thrived in ways anyone could see. In particular, I watched his son grow — as a leader, athlete, and person.
None of these changes would have happened, I suspect, had my friend still been working 75 hours a week.
‘Everything Has a Cost’
I bring my friend’s story up not to say we shouldn’t pursue our dream jobs, but to demonstrate that even the dreams we achieve come with costs.
As Richard Lorence recently pointed out, economics, above all else, teaches one fundamental fact: everything has a cost. “Every decision you make, as an individual, business leader, policy maker, or government official, sets you on a path that opens some opportunities and closes others.”
This idea is known in economics as opportunity cost, and it describes the loss of potential gain from other alternatives when a different one is chosen.
We often think about opportunity costs in terms of money. If I spend $5,000 on a Super Bowl ticket, I can’t spend that $5,000 to pay down my house. If I spend $10 on an IPA at a bar and grill, I can’t spend that same $10 on the cheese curds.
Opportunity costs, of course, go far beyond money. Every choice we make comes with a cost. Even now, as I write this article, I’m aware that I’m not preparing for a meeting I have this afternoon. That I’m not yet reviewing the articles queuing up in the submissions pipeline.
This shouldn’t be alarming, however. It’s basic economics.
“There are no solutions,” Thomas Sowell famously observed, “only trade-offs.”
To go back to Wilde’s quip, one could argue there is a certain tragedy in this. We cannot have it all. As soon as we achieve our dream, we’re losing something else.
Yet I don’t see this as a tragedy. It’s simply reality. And by better understanding opportunity cost and trade offs, we can hopefully make better choices — though only individuals can determine if one thing is better than another.
This brings me back to my friend. I sometimes wonder if he would choose to have his dream job back if he could, knowing today what it would cost him.
I don’t know the answer, but I think he’d say, “Not in a million years.”