#11- The Monetary Cost of Joy

I was 16 when the first squash court opened in Ranchi, the city I grew up in. The game was magic. It required athleticism and finesse. How to make the most efficient use of limited space, “dancing” in a box. Squash was like ballet in sport form. I was immediately enamored with it. Since the game is played indoors on a wooden court, you’re required to wear non-marking shoes. At the time, I had no conception of different shoes being a necessity for different sports. I only understood shoes of two varieties: sneakers and formals.

The cheapest non-marking shoes I could find were 3000 rupees ($70 USD in 2009) and 3000 rupees was a LOT of money for me to ask of my parents. I would try to sneak on to the court with my vagrant kicks which helped me develop my love for the game but some part of me always felt like an impostor when I did.

Squash continued when I left for college and the love grew as I met players far better than I was, or introduced the sport to new friends who had never heard of it before. The shoes remained out of reach though. There were always other expenses that felt more justified.

College exposed me to other interests as well. My campus was massive and I lived 26 minutes walking from Computer Science building. The winters of rural Illinois didn’t make the walks any easier so in my junior year I bought a secondhand $150 GT mountain bike to get to classes faster. It was an old frame from the 90s that GT didn’t manufacture anymore. A justified expense, one might say. More expensive than the single speed throwaways I could buy at Walmart but this thing looked like a vintage, rode like butter, and I came to love it like a bird loves the sky. When I was graduating two years later and moving to Seattle for a job, I didn’t want to leave the bike behind. I had the bike shipped.

When I made it to Seattle, I wanted to get the bike tuned up so I found a bike shop with good reviews and took it there. The guy told me that the tuneup would cost $150, the same price I paid for the pre-tuned bike! When I asked him why the price was so high, he told me that he would essentially take the bike apart and put it back together to ensure I was getting back a cycle that was as good as new. It was the cost of craftsmanship.

Clearly the owner was passionate about his work (and charged for it too). At one point he told me that his personal riding gear - his bike, helmet, safety gear - all together could be the downpayment on a house!

When I have all my riding gear on, I’m walking around with 20 grand worth of stuff.

My fresh-grad-just-starting-to-make-money-in-life mouth was agape. 20 grand! I hadn’t seen that kind of money in my life; to consider spending it on biking gear seemed insane! But that’s also the first time I understood what a hobbyist's passion truly meant. At some level, it made me envious to not even have a passion to spend that kind of money on.

That first year in Seattle was tough. Life went from all structure all the time to a formless blob of Play Doh. As I struggled to find meaning, I went back to the things that brought me joy. After a year of not playing any sport, I decided to return to squash. The burden of loneliness was already so much that I couldn't wait any longer to do something that would make me happy. Non-marking soles stood in front of me as a tiny hurdle again. But this time, I had my own money to spend.

I looked at the situation slightly differently now. Instead of telling myself, "I can't justify this expense," the weight of isolation made me realize "I can't justify denying myself this joy." Putting on those shoes and walking on the court made me feel like I belonged on that court for the first time.

Life doesn’t optimize for the shortest route to happiness. It takes its own circuitous ways in helping us understand our values. Joy is not always rational, but emotional. And while the monetary price I paid for those shoes may not feel rationally justified (really, a dedicated pair of shoes for squash? how many times a week will you even play?), the happiness they brought to my heart was priceless.