How Too Many Choices Left Us All With Major Commitment Issues.
Like many other people, I have great difficulty choosing a show on Netflix. I remember when I was younger with cable television; and before that I only had the local stations that fizzled in and out of static. Back then, I would be forced to accept whatever was playing at that time. If it was Judge Judy or the news or America’s Got Talent I would have to choose to either continue watching or come back later to see if I had better luck.
Now with all of the choices available, my challenge has shifted to committing myself to one show. Sure, the pilot might be interesting, but am I really feeling up for 13 seasons? Then, if I change my mind and don’t finish the series, I’m struck with a weird sense of guilt and dissatisfaction for the time I wasted getting up to season 3 with no resolution to the storyline.
Or, worse yet, watching a movie with a cliffhanger sends my remote flying out the window with the velocity to behead a misfortunate pigeon.
I hesitate to call this a serious problem, given how fortunate I am to have too many choices versus none at all, yet it’s a problem most of us face regardless. It exists in other forms too, through dating apps with hundreds of people at our fingertips, career options that exceed into the thousands, even menus with five times of cheeseburgers. Multiple choices can seem an advancement to some and a brain melting muck of missed opportunities for others.
Commitment issues seem to be a larger problem today than they were back when we were more likely to inherit our father’s blacksmith shop or stay home with children. For the record, I’m certainly not saying that us women would be happier if we lived in the days of harsher gender norms, my point is that these choices were not considered our rights as humans. Hundreds of thousands of movies at our fingertips was not an option, what was playing at the time, if you were fortunate enough to own a tv, was what the family settled on that night. If your true love lived in Budapest and you were in Toronto, well…tough cookies. The milkman was single and available that Friday night and the guy in Budapest had no way of knowing you existed.
The constant fear that there are better options we are not taking leads to dissatisfaction with the choices we make. It can lead to a shaky form of self identity as we question ourselves every which way. Relationships can and often do fail from unfaithfulness spurred on by FOMO, and friendships dwindle from people stretching themselves thin in the hope of meeting cooler, more popular people instead. The idea of settling for good enough is considered the 7th deadly sin as we yearn for better, drowning in our self entitlement as the things which could have made us happy coast by on our quest for GUCCI belts at half off and the one place that offers truly bottomless mimosas without judgemental stares.
A bit of a dramatic analogy, sure, but my point is made. There are no perfect options, no television show with nothing to nitpick, no american made mexican food that doesn’t give me intestinal cramps, and no authentic GUCCI belts for fifty percent off that aren’t stolen or damaged. That’s just how it is. It’s life, short and sweet and drowning in options that leave us competing for the finest things that we don’t even use or remember when the next option comes up.
Beat the cycle. Choose the randomizer option on Netflix and stick through the whole movie. Chances are that after going for ‘good enough’ several times, you’ll realize that those choices were never that bad to begin with.
-Faith Larson.
(You can follow me on Instagram or Twitter @Idiocyreleased for updates on my horror writing career, As always, thank you for reading my ramblings, and I hope you have an awesome day.)
