Choice

I was searching for an old document that I wrote and came across these notes that I scribbled to myself one night in OpenOffice:

My head keeps wandering back to a line uttered in the movie "Fight Club" by Brad Pitt. “Our lives are our great depression”. He was speaking to the fact that the modern man has no great adversity to face. Nothing to spur him on. This ironically results in a middle class society that is bored with itself. A society that is searching for meaning, for purpose in life. Isn't it ironic that in times of better living circumstances that we long for times of hardship?

What is it about harder times that we find appealing? And why is it that so many prosperous people are bored, unsettled and unfulfilled by life? The answer is: choice. We have too many choices nowadays. In harder times choices are limited. Life is simple. It is amusing that choice, a tool that can bring infinite happiness and power, is also capable of making us so miserable.

Choice is the key to happiness.

One can achieve a level of happiness by removing the amount of choices in life.

The man who has the greatest capability for choice but chooses the least; he is the unhappiest of all.

The man who can and does choose in every facet of his life; he has found true happiness.