I am a planner at heart.
I draw up schedules, estimate times, and tend to have a general idea of not only the proceedings of my immediate present but also of my near future. At least until it all falls apart anyway.

I had made plans to visit my hometown and had alerted some of my friends that I would be in town a few weeks in advance. So it was to my great surprise and profound disappointment that as this week progressed it seemed harder than it should have been to gather my friends together for a dinner and games night.

And so, I made the last minute decision to not travel back to my hometown for a visit. And of course soon after I made that decision, some friends contact me to tell me that they could make it for part of the evening after all – which only briefly threw me into the: “oh maybe I should have gone back after all” reasoning before I decided that I was being ridiculous. Sometimes being late really isn’t all that better than never.

It sounds like I’m telling a sad story here, though actually I’m not.
The thing is, I think I finally realized something today:

Whenever we make a choice we make a sacrifice.

I don’t usually think in these terms but by choosing to do something, I am choosing to not do anything else in that moment. Economists call this “opportunity cost”: the cost of the alternative that wasn’t chosen. I all it “We can’t eat our cake and have it too”.

Sometimes these choices come easily to us. The opportunities that we forgo are obviously less appealing than our other options. (Driving 10 minutes or walking 90 minutes in the snow?)

Sometimes, it is harder to weigh out our choices and every path before us seems equally good or equally bad. (Black or grey car?)

And sometimes, what we so readily sacrifice turns out to not be as inferior a choice as we thought it would be. We eagerly believe the grass is greener on the other side and when we come up against the fence to a parking lot, we howl in frustration, adamant in our belief that the grass is just behind the row of cars blocking our view.

When I look at it from this light, it’s much easier not to be upset whenever my plans don’t come into fruition. I don’t always realize what I’m sacrificing when I’m choosing something. For my plans to be frustrated is not necessarily woeful or lamentable as I so frequently leap to feeling. Sometimes I look back and am glad that things didn’t happen as I had originally planned and that I was stopped from sacrificing something that I shouldn’t so easily give up yet.

Perhaps this is how I should approach the question of singleness. At an age where being single is difficult when many of my friends are dating, engaged, or married, I wonder at my current state and am so ready to leave singleness aside for some greener grass. In so doing though, I willfully forget what crossing the fence entails: that in so doing, I would also leave all the joys and perks of singleness.