123 Marbles
It’s just been accepted that since choice is good, more choice is better, but…this perfectly reasonable assumption turns out to be false.
Barry Schwartz
I was having a conversation with my niece last week about life for my mother’s generation of women. In my mother’s day, you got married, had children, and never, ever got divorced (even if you hadn’t made the best choice of partners). My mother is forty-three years older than I am and the world that she lived in varies drastically from my world and one of the reasons is the variety of choices available to women now. We can choose: which career we’d like (she could be a nurse or a teacher - she chose the latter); to get married or not; have children or not; the list goes on, and on, and on.
When I was talking with my niece, I was expressing a certain dissatisfaction with all the choices, a longing to go back to when times were simpler. I said, “Sometimes I just think it would be better if we had less…” (I couldn’t even finish the sentence because I knew it would be going against all the hard work of Gloria Steinem et al.). My niece looked at me as if I was crazy. After all, let’s take an example pertinent to 365 Marbles - would I choose to go back to Ex-man? No, but the option to not be with him (the almost too readily available back door) made this other choice irrelevant - the choice to be happy wherever I am. After all, in Shakespeare’s words, “There’s nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.” (Is this really true for relationships? But that may be the query of an entirely different marble.)
Sometimes I wonder what women felt like when corsets were abolished. During World War I, women were discouraged from buying corsets and apparently, the metal saved was enough to build two battleships. As the corset declined in popularity, I wonder how many women breathed a sigh of relief (literally) and how many preferred the structure provided by the corset? My mother lived in a corseted reality (okay, by then it was a girdled reality but you get my point). How much of my own dissatisfaction is because of too many choices?
I’ve heard of an ideology called Access Consciousness that professes living in “ten-second increments” making new choices every ten seconds. The practice seems to take the pressure off of making choices as you’re never stuck with an outcome - if you don’t like it, choose again. The idea is that awareness is the result of a choice, not the prerequisite for making a choice. I think that’s where I get jammed up - trying to look at how decisions will affect different areas of my life and getting overwhelmed. The result can be the paralyzing stagnation of feeling the gravity of every choice. As philosopher Henri- Frédéric Amiel wrote, "The man who insists upon seeing with perfect clearness before he decides, never decides. Accept life, and you must accept regret."
This week I found a TEDtalks segment by Barry Shwartz entitled, “The Paradox of Choice” (http://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_choice.html). His talk perfectly mirrored the sentiments I was feeling while talking with my niece and I found that the paradox of choice is not just a female condition but a human condition. He says, “The most important thing is to learn that good enough is almost always good enough; you don't need to find the best. You'll be happier if, once you find something that meets your standards, you stop looking and don't worry about it.”
I wonder how the paradox of choice collides with the desire for perfection? I live in a city bitten by the “perfect bug” - where even the once commonplace doughnut is taken to an art form (can you imagine an Earl Grey doughnut? - If you can’t, check out Cartems http://cartems.com/ - they’re amazingly delicious and I don’t even like doughnuts). With so many options to choose from, how can I be assured that I’m choosing the right one? But maybe it’s as Barry Schwartz noted, “The secret to happiness is low expectations.”
Eeyore seemed to have low expectations but was he happy? Do you flourish in an environment ripe with choices? Do you become easily overwhelmed? What role does instinct play when you’re faced with myriad choices? Do you rely more on rational thought?
It’s just been accepted that since choice is good, more choice is better, but…this perfectly reasonable assumption turns out to be false.
Barry Schwartz
I was having a conversation with my niece last week about life for my mother’s generation of women. In my mother’s day, you got married, had children, and never, ever got divorced (even if you hadn’t made the best choice of partners). My mother is forty-three years older than I am and the world that she lived in varies drastically from my world and one of the reasons is the variety of choices available to women now. We can choose: which career we’d like (she could be a nurse or a teacher - she chose the latter); to get married or not; have children or not; the list goes on, and on, and on.
When I was talking with my niece, I was expressing a certain dissatisfaction with all the choices, a longing to go back to when times were simpler. I said, “Sometimes I just think it would be better if we had less…” (I couldn’t even finish the sentence because I knew it would be going against all the hard work of Gloria Steinem et al.). My niece looked at me as if I was crazy. After all, let’s take an example pertinent to 365 Marbles - would I choose to go back to Ex-man? No, but the option to not be with him (the almost too readily available back door) made this other choice irrelevant - the choice to be happy wherever I am. After all, in Shakespeare’s words, “There’s nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.” (Is this really true for relationships? But that may be the query of an entirely different marble.)
Sometimes I wonder what women felt like when corsets were abolished. During World War I, women were discouraged from buying corsets and apparently, the metal saved was enough to build two battleships. As the corset declined in popularity, I wonder how many women breathed a sigh of relief (literally) and how many preferred the structure provided by the corset? My mother lived in a corseted reality (okay, by then it was a girdled reality but you get my point). How much of my own dissatisfaction is because of too many choices?
I’ve heard of an ideology called Access Consciousness that professes living in “ten-second increments” making new choices every ten seconds. The practice seems to take the pressure off of making choices as you’re never stuck with an outcome - if you don’t like it, choose again. The idea is that awareness is the result of a choice, not the prerequisite for making a choice. I think that’s where I get jammed up - trying to look at how decisions will affect different areas of my life and getting overwhelmed. The result can be the paralyzing stagnation of feeling the gravity of every choice. As philosopher Henri- Frédéric Amiel wrote, "The man who insists upon seeing with perfect clearness before he decides, never decides. Accept life, and you must accept regret."
This week I found a TEDtalks segment by Barry Shwartz entitled, “The Paradox of Choice” (http://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_choice.html). His talk perfectly mirrored the sentiments I was feeling while talking with my niece and I found that the paradox of choice is not just a female condition but a human condition. He says, “The most important thing is to learn that good enough is almost always good enough; you don't need to find the best. You'll be happier if, once you find something that meets your standards, you stop looking and don't worry about it.”
I wonder how the paradox of choice collides with the desire for perfection? I live in a city bitten by the “perfect bug” - where even the once commonplace doughnut is taken to an art form (can you imagine an Earl Grey doughnut? - If you can’t, check out Cartems http://cartems.com/ - they’re amazingly delicious and I don’t even like doughnuts). With so many options to choose from, how can I be assured that I’m choosing the right one? But maybe it’s as Barry Schwartz noted, “The secret to happiness is low expectations.”
Eeyore seemed to have low expectations but was he happy? Do you flourish in an environment ripe with choices? Do you become easily overwhelmed? What role does instinct play when you’re faced with myriad choices? Do you rely more on rational thought?
No comments:
Post a Comment