"Having It All" Does Not Exist

As a teenager in high school and into college, I worked at a Wal-Mart store in Canton, GA. I will never forget a conversation that I had with a fellow employee one day, when I was telling this gentleman what I would like to do with my life. I told this fellow, who was a post-Vietnam army vet, of my ambition to have a small farm, but that I knew that I could never afford to remain in North Georgia and run a small farm. His statement to me has always stuck with me, and I have applied this to many decisions that I have had to make in my life.

"You can have anything that you want to have if you are willing to pay the price."

At the time this was a pretty large statement that I did not fully comprehend. But what he was really talking about can be simply stated as the concept of opportunity cost.

Actions speak louder than words, and one can often glean the priorities of an individual based on his actions. A man who claims that his wife and children are his main priority, but yet goes out on Friday night, loses half of his paycheck on a poker game while drinking most of what is left really does not have his family foremost in his mind. He is sacrificing time spent with his wife and children, not to mention at least a portion of their livelihood, for himself and his own pleasure.

Every action performed has an opportunity cost. You have the opportunity to perform another action if you do not perform the current action. Your priorities will dictate which action that you perform.

Herein lies the fallacy of "having it all." You must sacrifice the opportunity of gaining one thing to gain another. Therefore, one can never have it all.

By our actions today, most individuals in society has one common priority: self-indulgence. "As long as I am pleasing myself, then I am happy." Responsibility for others and to others is shirked off as easily as dropping a jacket at the front door. This priority is what drives people to do what they do.

This is evident with many people gaining more and more material goods, often beyond their means, having less and less children, and what children they have are handed to someone else to raise. We have fatherless children because biological sperm donors view themselves as above their obligation to do their part in raising a child. We have latch-key kids because mothers had rather be able to have a career outside the home rather than face their responsibility of raising children in the home. Worse, we have career women hellbent to have a child when well-beyond peak child-bearing years and to raise said child without the assistance of a man. Of course, the decisions made by these people is at a cost of allowing a child to grow without guidance, like a rowboat on the ocean without a rudder.

I am not being hypocritical of people. I am not perfect, and I make my fair share of mistakes, occasionally jumbling my priorities out of order. However, my home is something that a lot of people would not consider for themselves. I could make $10k-$15k more in my profession by driving into Atlanta. We could send our children to public school and daycare, my wife could go to work, and we could have a lot more things. But my priority is God, wife, children, family & friends. My decisions are based on those priorities, and I try to live by them. These opportunities my wife and I pass up to spend time with our children, raise them, educate them, and see that they have some guidance in their lives as they grow. This is the opportunity that I could not pass up for all the riches in the world.