what’s the cost of your choice?

Dear you,

I am no stranger to packing. I travel so much on work trips that I think I have perfected the hand-luggage packing technique, but packing your whole life to live in a new place for a year is completely different. It feels like an audit and exposes how much you’ve changed, what you value, and what you can actually do without.

While going through my things [let’s call it packing-prep], I encountered an interesting insight: some possessions come with invisible baggage. e.g. imagine you want a TV to entertain guests, but then you need a TV stand, then the stand looks too bare, so you buy a decorative bowl and vase. Now the bowl and vase each need something in it – maybe some flowers. before you know it, that one TV decision has led to five purchases taking up space.

This happens everywhere in life, not just with stuff. you say yes to one event, and suddenly you need a new outfit because it’s formal, a gift for the host, transportation arrangements. what felt like a simple “yes” becomes a web of additional decisions and costs. or you join a friend group that’s really into hiking, and now you need gear, weekend availability, and energy for outdoor activities you never planned for.

The problem isn’t the TV or the friend group – it’s that we rarely count the real cost of our choices. We see the surface decision but miss the ecosystem it creates around itself.

Packing with weight restrictions forced me to be honest about these hidden costs. Some things I owned had spawned so many supporting purchases that they were literally weighing me down. Some commitments I’d made had created so many additional obligations that they were draining my time and energy.

So now I ask different questions before bringing something new into my life: what else will this require of me? What additional commitments is this decision likely to create? Am I prepared for the full ecosystem, not just the initial choice?

It might sound like basic thinking, but when I started being honest about these cascading effects, I found myself making very different choices. lighter choices. Choices that aligned with how I actually want to live rather than how I thought I should live.

Maybe it’s worth considering: what in your life came with more baggage than you expected? And what would it look like to make decisions based on their true cost rather than just their surface appeal?

What choice have you made recently that has cost wayyyy more than you anticipated? Tell me in the comment section.

with love,

Blessing Abeng