Link What Schwartz has discovered is that sometimes, what we need in order to be happy is to limit our choices. We want to be free to make some choices; but we want to be free of the regretful burden of making others.
People who don’t have cancer, when asked whether they want to have control over their own treatment, overwhelmingly answer yes. But actual cancer patients, whose survival might depend on those choices, overwhelmingly answer that they want their doctors to tell them what is the best course of treatment. (There are exceptions in both categories, of course.)
At the same time, nursing home patients who are given no choices are far more likely to die sooner than those who are given at least some significant areas of autonomy, where they can make choices for themselves.
We need to be free to choose; we need to be free of endless choosing.
The trick is to find the balance. To teach ourselves to live as satisficers, not filling our lives with meaningless regret over “lost” opportunities. To find good ways to limit our own choices in ways that will leave us free to make the ones that remain to us.
Schwartz doesn’t pretend to have the answers to the woes of modern life. But he has some answers, or at least some suggestions.
Certainly a book I plan to read. And something to chew on in the meantime.
