Choosing to Choose
In this country, we’re really attached to having lots of choices. We want to go into the grocery store and have 73 different kinds of pasta sauce on the shelves, and we’ll complain if anyone tells us we can’t. But guess what? Trader Joe’s has based a hugely successful business model on giving us just one or two choices, and making sure they’re pretty good.
It turns out, though we say we want a gazillion choices, we’re often much happier if we have fewer. A ton of research has confirmed this. Too many choices leads to both more indecision and more buyer’s remorse. Lately, I’ve been thinking that this applies to a lot more than tomato sauce.
Take social media, for instance. How much happier might we be with our vacations, our families, and our lives if we weren’t constantly encouraged to compare them to all the curated, airbrushed, alternative versions that everyone we’ve ever met is posting on Instagram?
Or how about work? When there are a dozen job sites with thousands of positions, it’s easy for a young person starting their career to think that the perfect job must be out there waiting for them somewhere. But what if the only way to get satisfying work is to start doing something, and find out where your talents and passions lie by offering them to the world?
One place where our apparent choices have exploded is in relationships. Between OK Cupid and Match.com and Tinder, there are seemingly thousands of possible connections, relationships and hook-ups waiting for us within a few miles of our doorsteps. And now that polyamory is becoming an option, we might be able to make multiple choices at once. Maybe we can have our cake and pie and tiramisu, and eat it too!
On the other hand, I know a lot of people whose computer dating experience has been more disappointing and degrading than regular dating, and on a larger scale. And I’ve also seen some arranged marriages that turned out to be epic successes, because “if” was never the question--only “how.” Nothing is guaranteed either way. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned about relationships over the years, it’s that they can’t succeed unless you put in the work. You have to combat the dulling effects of familiarity by constantly reinvesting and recommitting to love. Anything that distracts you from that has the potential to undermine the choice you’ve already made.
The strange thing about having too many choices is that they sometimes keep us from actually making a real choice. Making a choice is about much more than the first moment of decision--it’s about exploring that choice, and investing in it, and nurturing it over time. The distraction of infinite possibility can distract us from really exploring the choices we’ve already made. It can keep us from being completely present for the life we’re living right now.
None of this is particularly new. There are platitudes aplenty that say roughly the same thing. Don’t try to get what you want--try to want what you get. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. The grass is greener, etc. But they wouldn’t be trite unless they were often repeated, and we keep saying them for a reason.
So yes, let’s enjoy our options. Let’s make full use of them, and make the best decision we can. And then, when the time comes, let’s open a door and really walk through it. What good are all those choices if we never really choose?
