By Dina Aldabbagh

There is a cost to everything, but what so many people don’t perspectivize is the thing’s true cost — they only see its current cost. People see the price of something in the moment and say, “it’s too expensive,” but what they lose from sight is that the other side of it will actually eventually cost them much more. Foresight and perspective allow one the superpower of agency down the line, as long as they’re willing to make the hard decision now. If you don’t have foresight — if you don’t see a purpose to the pain you allow yourself to experience in the present moment — you’ll never endure the current cost. But once you understand that the decision you make today will help you infinitely more than it hurts you, you will endure it over and over again.

Perspective is what allows this. Without the end goal in sight, nearly nobody on earth would strategically starve themselves to lose weight, or go hundreds of thousands of dollars into debt for a degree, or endure hour-long intense exercises every day to build muscle. But the point is: they see the end. They see the purpose. They know what they’re doing is allowing them to get to that end they desire.

You can miss your desired destiny if you don’t understand the importance of, at times, strategically sacrificing something for your own greater good. If you live in fear forever of the current cost, you can’t get the thing that’s supposed to come out of it. This is the battle you must fight within yourself: the one where you focus too much on the present. Think ahead. You can have everything you want if you think ahead. 

Here’s a surprisingly apt parallel to my life to understand it: my espresso machine vs Starbucks coffee. I love a latte, I do. Typically I like to be a one-a-day kind of girl, but I’ve recently gone down to around 3-4 a week. Price influenced this since being back to paying US coffee prices. When I lived in Spain, one-a-day was nothing — the coffees were 2 euros. However since being back in the States, I’ve been met with the lovely $6-$8 lattes we all know and love. This adds up quickly.

I decided to buy an espresso machine; its Black Friday cost came out to $160. Mind you, this is a great machine in terms of quality and ease of use, especially for the cost. I was aware of it because friends of mine have it. Whilst over at their house, I used the machine and saw, “Huh, I enjoy this coffee all the same as the Starbucks coffee.” The difference was one was made at home and the other was made for $6+ for the smallest size at a cafe. 

Many people look at the charge of $160 as too much — and sure, all at once it might sting — but they don’t have the perspective. To them, they can only cough up $6 for coffee…at a time that is. These people would say, “I could never spend that much on a coffee machine!” but I would urge them to go look at their coffee spendings from the last year. 

At $6 a cup, $160 comes out to 26 cups of coffee. At my preference of four a week, the machine pays for itself in 6.5 weeks. Even if I were a very light coffee lover and maybe just had two coffees a week, the machine still pays for itself in three months. That means that in a month and a half, I will start saving money. The upfront cost looks like a lot — and this is where it’s easy to get fooled — but if you can put the pieces together clearly enough to recognize: 

1. “I spend $6+ per coffee” 
2. “I consistently drink four cups a week” 
3. “I’ve been a coffee lover long enough and that won’t change soon”

…then you realize that this is an investment.

Now, of course this is where preference comes into play. Some people actually value the experience of going to the cafe, so getting an at-home coffee machine doesn’t really add to their experience, but I know myself and much more often than not, I actually do just want the coffee. Ultimately, then, I’d be happy to save that money and utilize it towards other life enjoyments of mine. 

This is where planning ahead functions as a slingshot. When you always just think presently, looking at the current cost, you stay in exactly that same spot. However, if you can plan ahead and look at your entire life as an ecosystem of different things working together, you can make the decisions now that allow you to have everything you want as long as you’re willing to make a temporary sacrifice. 

Let’s look at the difference between me and a theoretical $6-coffee-for-life person. In a month and a half, I will no longer be losing $6 per cup of coffee. Yes the actual coffee costs something, but it ends up coming down to like $1 a cup — meaning that I would have fractioned the cost of my daily coffee in just a month and a half’s time. In that time, I will have started saving money to use for something else that I want. Maybe that’s the Ninja Creami, for example. Well, that machine costs $300 — therefore at a $6 coffee four times a week, in 12.5 weeks I would have saved enough money to also get the Ninja Creami. So let’s make it crystal clear: the espresso machine pays for itself in 6.5 weeks, 12.5 weeks later I would have saved $300 allowing me the bandwidth to go buy a Ninja Creami while on my current budget — so 19 weeks from now (almost five months), I can have both my own espresso machine and an ice cream maker at ultimately no extra cost. 

The cost now looks great, because the $160 hits all at once instead of seeing $6, however ultimately it saves me money. That $160 was going to be spent on coffee eventually anyways. This is where a lack of perspective can hurt a person: they can accept the visible $6 cost for the moment, but they don’t understand that over time, it costs them more. While somewhat of an elliptical analogy, it illustrates my proposed principle perfectly: if you can plan ahead, you can have everything you want. You just have to be willing to make a temporary sacrifice — to temporarily pay a higher cost. 

A person who keeps spending the same $6 four times a week won’t have the room in their budget to gain anything beyond what they already have. This isn’t even about coffee. The person who is never willing to temporarily pay a higher price for their own greater good will never be able to do the necessary things that allow one to have freedom later. It may cost a lot of money to go to school to become a doctor, but if you’re making $300,000 in salary every year, from that point on you are set. 

My mom always said something to us growing up — particularly in regards to education: don’t miss the boat. That is to say: there is an opportunity you have right now to do something that you may not have later, or will be infinitely harder to achieve. I’m currently in grad school, I don’t have kids or commitments beyond myself. Now is the time to pay that cost. Can grad school be seen as a huge cost? Yes. I must pay tuition and sacrifice a lot of time for my studies, but it’s worth it. It may look like a cost now, but really it’s an investment. Eventually the payoff will far outweigh the cost.

You can think ahead and make the now-sacrifice or you can lose your chance. You can be bold in this moment while you have what you want in front of you, or you can be forced to accept what you’re given later. Destiny requires courage, and nothing is without cost. Eventually those $6 coffees will cost you far more than your own espresso machine. You must simply choose the cost you’re willing to pay.

This extends into the emotional arena of things as well. You can tell people how you feel, you can make the first move, you can allow visibility — or you can stay hiding. Vulnerability is the cost of having what you want in life. Exposure is the cost of entry — because they can’t let you in if you’re not even willing to get in the line and show you want to be there. 

That person could be your husband or wife or best friend ever, but if you continue to hide because the cost of showing how you truly feel seems too large in the moment, then you just miss out. That’s it. It’s not deeper. You just lose that person. They will go on to find their partner, community, and best friends, and you will too. You will just find the level of person who doesn’t feel like they “cost” you too much. And that’s alright as long as you can live with it. 

The pain point is that there is a life you genuinely want for yourself. There is a specific kind of partner, relationship, friendship, career, lifestyle, and a specific amount of coffee that you prefer to have in this life — but if you’re unwilling to pay the current, upfront cost of what would be the best thing for you, then you will simply not have that life. You’ll end up having to accept the version of life that feels like it costs you less — to settle for the life that demands less of you upfront. Which, ironically, eventually may just cost you much much more later anyways.

The shortcuts you think you’re taking now…you never actually avoid paying for them. You just feel the cost when it’s too late to make a change. Or, not “too late” necessarily because you always have the option, but it’s so much harder that you will almost certainly not change it. 

It may be a lot harder to, in this moment, face your fears and express honestly how you feel to someone. It might be much easier to hide what you want. The consequence, then, is that the kind of person you end up with is also the kind of person who is avoidant. Maybe this will never be a problem…or maybe it will be much larger of a problem down the line. The easy choice typically isn’t actually easy to live with, it’s just easy to make right now. 

It’s easy to use food to cope instead of sitting with your actual emotions in the moment. But later? When you feel so badly about yourself and your body and behavior? That’s a much sharper pain than allowing the initial emotion you avoided to just be felt. Because here’s the secret: you never avoid it anyways. What you suppress and avoid eventually always comes up — just when you are no longer strong enough to suppress it and the emotion is strong enough to overtake you. 

The same is true for everything. The partner you chose that felt like an easy choice even though you knew they weren’t really what you wanted for your life? That divorce will come down hard in 20 years. Eventually there’s no hiding from your choices. You can overlook the current cost until it’s unable to be ignored.   

“High risk, high reward,” the saying goes. It’s a bit of a fear-mongering sentiment, right? I prefer to see it as high investment, high reward. You will pay a cost no matter what, at least let it be for the thing you actually want.  

I know sometimes that thing looks too big. I know that when you’re faced with what your dreams really demand of you, you could feel the need to shrink — because it feels like defeat waiting to happen. But you must know that everything will ask something out of you. “The pain of growth or the pain of regret,” the cliché goes. The pain is felt either way. You can allow yourself the chance to fail now — with the opportunity to get back up and try again while you still have it — or you can deny yourself completely, ignore the big demands your desires ask of you, and feel the failure later. 

“No more living intimidated — ‘I can’t do it, it’s too big.’ No. When you know who you are, you won’t run from the giant, you’ll run to the giant” (Joel Osteen – Your Time To Shine 4:05). Once you understand that that giant is your cost of entry into the land of everything you’ve ever wanted, you’ll run to it. That giant is the cost. That obstacle is your way. And if you can have the perspective to understand that that giant is exactly what you need to face in order to have everything you want, you’ll put fear aside in an instant. 

No cost is too high if it gets you the life that will make you the happiest. There is a destiny for you — numerous, depending on who you choose to be. If you choose to be afraid and shy away from the challenge, your destiny will look a lot different than if you choose to do the hard thing now. 

“Destiny” signifies inevitability. Like: it’s going to happen no matter what. But understand that the different versions of you have different destinies. Based on what you’re willing to do now, there are different inevitable futures for you. So whose destiny are you committing to?