Stark Raving Madeleine

Have you ever felt guilty for not appreciating how much you have? If you do, you’re not alone. One of the most frequent things I hear from people is just that. “I should feel lucky for having so much, but I don’t.”

We do have a lot, but it’s too much. Just think about how many choices we’re faced with daily. Many of us start our days with what used to be a simple cup of coffee; now we decide between non-fat, half-fat, full-fat, soy, decaf, half-caf, hazelnut/amaretto/vanilla, with whip, no whip, extra hot, iced, room for cream, sugar, Splenda, Equal, Stevia… and the endless options don’t stop after we grab our coffee. We choose cereal from an entire grocery aisle of options. We choose television programs from hundreds of channels. Looking something up on the Internet provides us with thousands of websites from the simplest query. It’s overwhelming. So many choices give us the feeling that we should be able to control every teeny aspect of our lives, so when our lives go awry, we feel responsible.

Advertisers have sold us the idea that choice = freedom. While that is certainly true for big things like voting, it doesn’t necessarily hold true for which brand of bottled water we buy. The human brain can only manage so many things at once. It’s exhausting. Sometimes I think we’re so wrapped up in wondering if we bought the right car seat that adding the burden of learning some of the basics like dealing with teething, what to do if the baby won’t latch, and other things that deal directly with caring for this new person in our lives, feels like too much. We are so focused on getting the right accessories and then wonder why it doesn’t all go smoothly like the advertisements promised it would.

We are lucky. We do have it all; we can vote, we can work, we may even have a woman president. We have bigger houses, nicer cars, and more clothes than our parents had. Some of us even have housecleaners and nannies. We take yoga classes and get massages. We’re so lucky that it’s too much. We gather more and more stuff, do more and more activities and wonder why we feel so empty. It’s time to cut back.

Tags: advertising, choices, consumption, economy, green, options, overwhelmed, resolutions, simpler living, too much, voting