Economics offers lessons in life, loyalty, and letting go

My parents just got divorced. I didn't expect it, but I wasn't shocked. Looking back, I realized that they put so much energy into raising their kids that they neglected their marriage. The split has had a greater effect on my life than whose house I'll go to for Christmas. It's been surprisingly helpful.

I don't need sympathy, or even a dean's excuse. It's just that the more people I tell, the better I feel. The more I talk about it, the more it helps me. I realize that there isn't anything about my own life that I can't change. That's it. It sounds simple, but this realization has profoundly affected me.

Toward the end of what had been a great summer working in New Haven, I returned to a family I hadn't seen in seven months. After picking me up at the airport and taking me back to my dad's office, my parents calmly told me that my dad was moving out of the house as soon as I returned to school. Fortunately there was no finger-pointing. Their marrige just didn't work any more. Twenty-five years of their lives just sort of disappeared. Empty nest, midlife crisis--the reasons didn't matter. I realized that they weren't my business either. My parents had their own lives to live, but how does a divorce affect me now that I don't live at home any more?

Professor Steven Berry refers to them as "sunken costs." It doesn't matter that he was talking about economic theory. Sunken costs are unrecoverable expenses. You can't take them into account when making decisions about your future. As he so eloquently stated this past Monday, "They're gone anyway!" Just like spilled milk, there's no going back. I had been carrying around a lot of emotional (and material) baggage for years for no reason other than the fact that it had cost me something to obtain in the first place. I became a packrat. I kept everything from terrible CDs and books to ticket stubs from every movie I'd seen since seventh grade.

I had also put two years into becoming a psychology major. It was hard work. Those classes took a lot out of me. They cost me time, stress, and GPA points. I realized that this major wasn't what I had expected it to be. I wasn't having fun. It took a lot to make me realize that I could just stand up and say, "Forget it, I'm getting out of this."

The whole world as I knew it had to be flipped on its head for me to realize that there was no reason to be loyal to something that's now completely useless to me. Since this revelation, I've trashed a lot of useless junk that's accumulated over my first two years of college. It's not just my major that I've canned. Physical possessions that had originally cost me a lot were gone if I didn't really need them anymore. If it served no purpose, there was no reason to keep it around.

I hope that I can stick with this attitude. I never want to cling to something that drags me down. Loyalty is definitely a virtue, but it has to have its boundaries. I never understood this until my parents' divorce shook the foundations of everything I ever believed in.

I'm not at all angry with them. Whatever purpose their marrige served unfortunately died after my sister and I moved out of the house. Now, they both have new lives, though they're almost 50. I hope I can find the right balance of loyalty earlier in my life. I've got a good start. My classes and professors (especially Mr. Berry) are great now, and, after taking the time to collect my thoughts, I'm just more comfortable with myself.

The things I'm learning never cease to tie into life. When is the last time economics taught you such an important lesson about your emotional well-being? It's such a great feeling. I'm a worthwhile person, and I like myself. Why would I want to cling to something that brings me down? So what if it might become useful someday? For now, it is nothing but unnecessary baggage. So far, I've freed myself from a lot. Yale's a powerful launchpad, but if I'm going to do what I came here to do...if I want to shoot the moon, I can't be weighed down.

Tyler Mertes is a junior in Pierson.

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