reflections 7: Does it dry up?

Economists talk about “sunk costs” and “opportunity costs.” The sunk costs are your investments- what you've already put into a project. Opportunity costs are what staying in that present endeavor means you are giving up by not quitting it and reaping the benefits of a new project. The simple moral is to get out of something that is not paying out, even if you've been in it for a long time. Naturally humans are bad at doing this because we want our past investment to be validated. Pride can undermine the data which says we should give up and let ourselves fail.
The perplexity of my faith is made further difficult if this rule applies. In this vein, a decision is not merely economical. I have sunk a huge amount of investment into the ideals promoted by my spirituality and my religion. As I have outlined, recently my sentiment has been that it has not paid me out. You can argue that its not all about me, or that benefits will come later, but that's an annoyingly elusive motivation to hold up. They are both possibilities that are as unconfirmable as they are said to be lucrative. The natural state of things tends to show that without some kind of incentive that plays out within the near future, humans do not respond very well. If you find a committed and invested church patron, you will find someone who says that their faith satisfies them with some kind of benefit in the here and now.
Sure, I'm probably missing some profundity. Maybe I had a hold on it once, but I don't feel it anymore. I can't deny another experience either, if it can't relate. The case being, I'm just trying to understand why mine is different.