Few years ago I went to Bengaluru for a visit and met a younger cousin of mine. As can be expected, he works for a well-known software company. He has been staying there for quite some time now. Couple of decades back going abroad, particularly the US, used to be a big achievement. Probably it is still the same, but the degree of awe about going there has reduced substantially. In fact, today President of the USA is in awe of Bengaluru.

I casually asked my cousin why he didn’t try to stay in the US. He made a matter of fact statement – Bhaiya, for every choice that we make we have to pay a price. It is for us to decide which price we are willing to pay. There was a price to be paid to go abroad and there’s a price to be paid to stay here. I decided to pay the price of being here.

Our conversation suddenly stopped. No more questions asked and no more answers given. It was such a profound statement that it made me think hard. This is a perspective that I had never heard before and, to confess, never after. Though it’s been years this incident happened I just can’t forget the import of the statement.

Everyday of our lives we make our choices and take decisions. Sometime they are small and sometime they are big that have an impact on our entire lives or at least a large part of our lives. While most such decisions in our childhood are taken by our elders, first sort of big decision that we take is when we are in the higher classes of the school and we start thinking of career options. After that, the process goes on and on, almost till the very end of our lives. We keep making choices, keep taking decisions and often keep saying ‘If Only’.

I’m sure most married couples would agree that at some point in time or the other one of them has said that ‘if only’ I hadn’t chosen you but the other guy/girl I’d have been much happier today. ‘If Only’ is something that continues to dog us very often. We spend disproportionately large time in our lives in ‘if only’ syndrome. Let me give you few examples here which are quite common for you to connect with this issue:

• ‘If only’ I had chosen medicine instead of engineering…
• ‘If only’ I had taken the first job offer that I received…
• ‘If only’ I had gone abroad immediately after studies got over…
• ‘If only’ we had celebrated New Year’s Eve at home…
• ‘If only’ we had gone for the movie instead of dinner…
• ‘If only’ I had the courage to reply to my boss on his face…
• ‘If only’ I had kept my tongue under control…
• ‘If only’ I had bought an SUV instead of a car…
• ‘If only’ we bought a particular share in a particular year…

Generally the process that we follow to make a choice is based on what is most suited or the best option at that moment and for many of those choices we subsequently say ‘If only’. When we consider the best choice we look at the positives that each of the options offers and chose the one that we feel has more positives in it. Sometime we even look at risk factors associated with the decision and prepare ourselves for adverse fall out of that decision. However, with time we realize that there are few negatives associated with the choice we made which we hadn’t considered. This is the price we chose to pay to make a particular decision. But since these negatives were not considered we never thought of the price of taking that particular decision. Let me narrate the price associated with certain choices, which are often not considered while making the choice:
• Going abroad: Staying away from parents, extended family, societal support structure
• Medicine as a profession: Years of studies, extended working hours, few holidays, negligible social life
• Job immediately after a professional degree or post-graduation: No income, more expenses and watching friends settled in family lives while we are still studying
• Guys marrying a career woman: Wife having equal or higher income, no time for household chores and having men as friends
• Guys marrying a very beautiful woman: She becomes centre of attraction
• Buying a sedan, not SUV: Maximum seating of five people, low undercarriage
• Private job: Lack of job security and absence of pension benefits
• Government job: No recognition of talent and superior performance

This is an endless list since the decisions that we take are endless. But the reason I’ve mentioned them here are because we have seen them all around us and it’ll be easy for us to connect with them. How many people who have taken these decisions have considered the price associated with them? Haven’t we seen many of our friends returning from the US? Or repeatedly calling parents there at the time of need at great discomfort to the parents? Haven’t we seen the doctors cribbing that they don’t get any time for themselves and the families even more frustrated that they are unable to get anytime from the doctor. Marital grave yard is full of cases where the principal reason for divorce was that the husband who wanted a working wife could not accept her earning higher than him, not cooking food for him or having many male friends. Or a guy who was very happy to marry a beautiful girl realized subsequently that when she is around no one is ready to speak with him. Do we remember the famous movie ‘Abhimaan’? Did Amitabh Bachchan in that movie consider the price of having a wife who sings better than him? I have many friends today who lament that they made a mistake by not taking up a government job since at least it would have been safe. Private sector may offer fancy salaries initially, but many people lose jobs in their forties and in any case, not everyone gets salaries that are astronomical. But even these guys don’t consider the price of this decision. Would they be happy living in mofussil towns, frequent transfers, political pressures etc.?

Limited point that I’m trying to make here is that at the time we make a choice we often consider the reward or even the risk associated with the choices, but we hardly ever consider the price of taking that decision whereas every decision that we take has a price associated with it. When we say ‘risk’, it has a possibility of an event happening or not. If it happens you lose and if it doesn’t happen you gain. But if you have identified the risk, you have a chance to prepare for an action plan to mitigate it. But the price is something that is definitive. It is certain. When we make a particular choice and the possibility of that event happening is 100% then we can say that this is the price of making that choice. Let’s say, an upcountry student gets an admission in IIT-B. In this situation there is a certainty that he will have to stay away from his family in a different city. There’s no possibility of his parents moving their base to Mumbai with him. If this price was considered at the time of making that choice, chances of regret in future on this issue would be lower and ‘if only’ syndrome may not happen.

My Little Thought Of Life in this context is that when we make our choices, particularly life choices, we must not only consider the rewards and risks associated with those choices but also the ‘price’ that we pay for each of the options. Once the rewards, risks and price are all considered well, internalize those factors and own the decision to have made a particular choice. If the decision doesn’t work out the way it was envisaged, stay away from the feeling of regret and ‘If Only’ syndrome. Own the decision, don’t regret and move ahead.

To my readers and friends, do consider the ‘price’ of choosing an option and stay away from temptation of thinking ‘If Only’.