Life does need cost. The life you chosed is either good or bad, but never without cost.

What is Opportunity Cost? It is an important economic concept, which is defined as getting something at the expense of giving up another thing. Generally speaking, it means the choice you made may lead to lost when you confront many choices.

Once I have heard such a story: A mother was cooking in the kitchen. Suddenly, she heard her three-year-old son crying loudly in the living room. In fact, it was that the son put his hand into the vase and could not pull it out. Mother rushed to help him at once. No matter effort she made, she still failed. In this emergency, mother had no choice but to break this unpredictable expensive curio vase. Her son’s hand was pulled out without any hurt, but he clenched his fist tightly. Did his hand twitched, the mother thought. She was so anxious that help open her son’s hand, finding that there was a Wu-Fen coin in the tight fist. The fact was not that the son could not pull out his hand, but that he was not willing to open his hand for the Wu-Fen coin. What a pure child he was. He refused giving up a Wu-Fen coin, while he lost a more expensive curio vase. He did not understand that his opportunity cost for the coin was a precious curio vase. But we can sure that he would consider it as a big mistake when he grown up.

Actually, we do usually make the same mistakes as the boy’s. In the competitive society, we are obsessed with our own pursuit and persistence, have iron-heart determination and refuse receding in front of interest. We betray friends for a little benefit, depart from wife or husband for a tinny disagreement, and attack brothers for a splinter. Why don’t we choose to give in?

People always believe that concession confirms failure. It is absolutely false. In economics, concession is a new choice after reconsideration of many different opportunity cost, is also a new distribution of limited resources. It makes advantage of the limited resources from low-efficient area to higher one through concession, resulting in overall improvement. A common saying goes that:” Draws back a step for boundlessness.” It excellently embodies the concept of Opportunity Cost. The essence of “Draws back a step” is concession, giving up the views or things we used to hold, and choosing another position or work styles.

Bill Gates discontinued his university studying and founded Microsoft and became a most wealthy man in the world. Some people say that Gates will not bent down to pick up a hundred-note on the floor, because it may lead to lost of millions of dollars for this movement. It maybe a little inflated, but Bill absolutely a wise business man, he knows giving up the precious academic study could offer him a choice of creating a new era, and giving up the hundred-note bring him greater benefit.

Giving up is another choice as well as a fortune for our lives.