Keeping it simple is an axiom worth living by but one we seem to be collectively struggling with in the 21st century.
I've always believed you can have too much of a good thing but this was confirmed when a sweet tooth found me lurking near the icecreams at my local servo.
Once
upon a time, service stations sold petrol. Some outdid themselves by also selling diesel. End of story. Now the icecream division alone is so vast you have to stop off in the chippie section during a circumnavigation of the freezer just to keep your blood sugars up.
Deciding on one icecream among the multitude requires the sort of mental dexterity normally possessed only by people with a very uncool IQ and thick glasses to match.
As I confounded myself with the big questions of life (milk chocolate shell versus white, mint filling versus hokey pokey, sorbet versus reduced fat frozen yoghurt) it occurred to me that life wasn't just simpler back when there was only a vanilla Trumpet, it was better.
The illusion that expanded choices have an exponentially expansive impact on our quality of life is a myth created by well-meaning parents who are determined to get us into university instead of the graduate programme at McDonald's, and well paid marketing executives whose fat salaries depend on developing new and better ways to wrap up and sell icecream.
The more choice we have, the more confused we become and the more potential we have to be disappointed by the eventual decisions we make and are then forced to live with.
Although it goes against every fibre in my soul to admit such a thing, I can't help wondering when I see my friends doing the exhausting dance of the modern- day working mum that life might actually have been better for them when their only choice was to stay at home, bake Anzac biscuits and breed.
Choice is all well and good when you have the ability to select one thing over the other and be happy with that decision, but in reality it usually means taking every option and doing each one averagely instead of one of them well.
It is a modern miracle that I can sit on my chuff and yet still be connected to the outside world by multiple technologies including landlines, cell phones, email and Facebook chat. But when I find myself communicating with people simultaneously on all of them I begin to wonder if my world wouldn't be more manageable and stress-free if all I could do was send out smoke rings.
When I was little, the sheer responsibility of choosing between becoming an astronaut, zoo keeper, scientist specialising in cancer cures and president of the United States was so overwhelming that it was a blissful relief when I discovered I wasn't smart enough to be any of them.
Anonymous mediocrity with limited choices and equally limited ambitions is a situation and state of mind which ought to be given a bit more credibility.
Wouldn't the world be a better place if we could walk into Subway and just order a sandwich and not be asked by an irritatingly enthusiastic server which of two sizes, three cheeses, six breads, eight sauces and 12 fillings we wanted to combine before we could eat what is essentially, despite the selection, still just a sandwich?
And wasn't television better when we only had three channels with decent content and paid actors instead of 50 all presenting varying themes of one genre of cheaply-produced and morally bankrupt "reality" TV?
These are all questions which occurred to me while I ate my vanilla Trumpet, now my icecream of choice in a world with too many choices.
Keeping it simple is an axiom worth living by but one we seem to be collectively struggling with in the 21st century.
I've always believed you can have too much of a good thing but this was confirmed when a sweet tooth found me lurking near the icecreams at my local servo.
Once
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