15

FREEDOM FROM CHOICE

Have you tried buying a new bed lately? I have, and it was terrifying. A Sunday-afternoon trip to a furniture store became a dizzying navigation of ‘ergonomic sleep technology’, ‘pillow science’, and ‘revolutionary pressure-relieving’ mattress choices. There were hybrid mattresses, gel mattresses, pillow-top mattresses, memory foam, latex. I could find out what my ‘sleep number’ was — somewhere between 0 and 100, ranging from extra firm to feather soft — to ensure that my bed was uniquely designed for my body. There was also the option to seek the advice of an in-store sleep consultant, or lie on a computerised bed that could take my measurements and analyse my body mass before spitting out my ‘sleep profile’. And I would need this assistance because, as the marketing continuously stressed, ‘Buying the right mattress is one of the most important decisions you will make.’ During my pre-purchase research, one website warned that the risks of choosing the wrong mattress included drowsiness, back pain, obesity, lung and throat irritation, weakened immune system, heart conditions, memory problems, reduced libido, and premature ageing. If I didn’t get this right I would be exhausted, sore, fat, forgetful, unfuckable, and destined for an early grave. No pressure.

When I finally made my decision — after several months of research and nearly two hours in the bedding department of a major retailer, lying on countless beds and interrogating the salesman as if he was a tight-lipped prisoner-of-war — I can’t say I was satisfied. A fortnight later the bed was delivered, and although it was perfectly comfortable, it took weeks of crippling buyers’ remorse before I could accept that the one I had chosen was probably just as good as any I had left behind.

In his book The Paradox of Choice, American psychologist Barry Schwartz put forward the theory that the free-market economy has led to paralysis, not liberation. In a TED talk discussing his research, Schwartz maintained that even if we managed to conquer our overwhelm and make a choice, we ended up less satisfied than we would be if we had fewer options to choose from. Using the example of the 175 different salad dressings on offer at his local supermarket, he said it was easy to imagine that a different choice would have been better. The imagined perfection of the alternative leads to buyer’s remorse, even if it was a good decision.

I can’t count how many hours of my life have been lost to a troubling sense that the decision I’ve just made was probably the wrong one. When my new bed was delivered, the old mattress was still lying on my lounge-room floor, waiting to be picked up by a friend. For a full afternoon I leapt from the floor mattress to the new bed, jumping and sitting and lying as I compared comfort, bounce, and support, agonising over whether my new purchase was any better than the bed I was discarding.

Schwartz talked about the ‘escalation of expectations’ and how the wider the choice, the more we expect from the product. In the days when there were fewer options, our bar was set lower. He described how disappointed he was after he went to a shop to replace his worn-out jeans. It had been so long since he’d bought a new pair he was dazzled by the choice: slim fit, easy fit, relaxed fit, button fly or zipper fly, bootcut, tapered, distressed. He walked away with jeans that were arguably better than he’d ever had, but he felt worse because they weren’t perfect. ‘Adding options to people’s lives can’t help but increase the expectations people have about how good those options will be,’ he wrote. ‘And what that’s going to produce is less satisfaction with results, even when they’re good results.’

The burden of choice can be a trigger point for the overly anxious. When I was quite unwell, I found myself in my local supermarket one day shuffling up and down the aisles trying to think of something I could eat. I had no appetite, but even on the very worst days, the least I could do for myself was put food in my body. It was a sensory overload. When did supermarkets get so bright? Is it to keep the staff awake? Does lighting up the store like a Vegas casino trick the brain into spending more? Tuna. I’d grab a can of tuna and make a pasta bake. Comfort food. I found the tuna aisle, and that’s when things fell apart. There were approximately 64 varieties of tuna. Tuna in brine, tuna in oil, tuna in spring water, tuna with rice, tuna slices. Then there were all the flavours: lemon and cracked pepper; street Asian, Korean barbeque, fiery chipotle, roasted capsicum, and three beans. My eyes darted from one flavour to another. I JUST WANT A FUCKING NORMAL CAN OF TUNA. I dropped my empty basket on the floor and ran from the store, silently weeping over an abundance of canned fish.

A psychiatrist back home in Edinburgh once told me that the most common place for his patients to have panic attacks was in the basement of the Marks & Spencer food hall on the city’s main shopping thoroughfare, Princes Street. He said that the glaring strip lighting, low ceilings, and crammed aisles, combined with an exit that could only be reached via two sets of escalators, provided the ideal breeding ground for acute anxiety. But I suspect it was also the bewildering array of options that drove people to lose their shit.

We are spoilt for choice in every aspect of our lives. A digital smorgasbord of movies and television shows are available at the click of a button. Streaming services have turned me into a glutton as I binge watch the latest Netflix series, promising myself ‘just one more episode’, before I discover it’s 3.00 am, I haven’t left the couch in seven hours, and I’ve lost all feeling in my legs. Every song ever written can be accessed in an instant, and we can source practically anything we want from an infinitely stocked online marketplace. But have all these options made us any happier?

In a famous experiment conducted by Columbia University, researchers set up a table offering six samples of jam in a supermarket. Every few hours the table was swapped for one displaying 24 varieties of jam. On average, shoppers sampled no more than two jams, regardless of how many were displayed. What was interesting was that while 60 per cent of customers stopped at the table with the larger assortment, compared to 40 per cent at the smaller one, a third of those who stopped at the table with only six choices went on to buy jam. Only 3 per cent of the shoppers who stopped at the larger assortment bought a jar.

A survey by insurance comparison service Choosi found almost 90 per cent of Australians feel that too much choice is making consumer decision-making harder and leading to buyer’s remorse. In Australia, supermarket chains Coles and Woolworths are scaling back on the number of products they offer to compete with discount store Aldi and its limited range of brands. In 2015, British supermarket chain Tesco announced it was scrapping a third of its 90,000 products to make the weekly shop easier for customers. Tesco stocked a whopping 224 types of air freshener compared to Aldi’s 12. It’s this same tyranny of choice that can lead us to stay wedded to power companies, phone providers, and banks that at best don’t serve us well, and at worst are robbing us blind. We may be sick of the huge bills, crappy service, and excessive fees, but the prospect of scouring the market to compare the competitors’ small print is just too overwhelming. It’s like trying to extricate yourself from a dysfunctional but comfortingly familiar relationship.

Making the ‘right’ choice is not just about getting value for money or making sure we’re not being ripped off. When I drill down into where my decision-making angst comes from, it’s deeper than that. My choices are a reflection of me. What is the perfect floor rug, kitchen appliance, or house plant to say, ‘Here is a well-adjusted, sophisticated adult woman with her shit together who would never dream of eating doughnuts for breakfast and wearing her pyjamas like a uniform’? It’s often more an exercise in trying to control the things I can’t — particularly other people’s opinions of me. And I’m not the only one. A few years ago, Nonie was flying to Queensland to meet her then boyfriend’s family for the first time. She was nervous, which was natural, but the reasons for her anxiety went beyond that. She told me that her biggest fear was looking silly on the beach. He came from a beach-going family, whose lives revolved around sand and surf. She was vampire-pale and had grown up in the country, lathering herself in the strongest sunscreen on the rare occasions when she might be exposed to prolonged periods of sunshine. ‘I just don’t know what to do with myself at the beach. I feel like I don’t belong and everyone can tell,’ she said as I drove her to the airport. In an attempt to appear as effortlessly beach chic as she imagined her boyfriend and his family would be, she went on a last-minute shopping spree, looking for a little black skirt she’d seen a beach-dwelling friend wear recently. She’d convinced herself that an exact replica of this skirt was the only thing that could transform her into a laidback goddess and thus save the holiday with the in-laws from certain disaster.

She didn’t find it. The trip turned out just fine.

Nowhere is the burden of choice more apparent than in the world of online dating. I’m starting to believe that option overload has ruined romance. You swipe and click and swipe, making split-second decisions based on the scantest, most superficial snippets of information. It’s bewildering. I recently downloaded Tinder again after a self-imposed hiatus that lasted several years. When I opened the app and began to swipe, my inner monologue went something like this: Nup. Nah. Nope. Too much beard. Serial killer. Why would you use your wedding picture as a profile? Nup. No, no, no. Weird eyebrows. ENOUGH WITH THE GUYS HUGGING SEDATED TIGERS. Nope. Nope. Which one even are you??? Put your shirt on. Nah. Maybe. Why can I only see half your face? Nup. Nah. Cute. Out of focus. Obviously dodgy. That’s just a picture of your ute. Nope. Nope. Nope.

There’s nothing like a dating app to make you confront just how shallow you really are. But this is the world we inhabit: we can afford to keep swiping because there will always be more options. You could chat to the 15 people you’ve already matched with, or you could keep searching for someone better. How do you know the partner of your dreams is not just a few more swipes away? Or what if they’re on a different dating app? There are apps that only match users with people they’ve recently been near — so there is now the added FOMO of knowing you may have just walked past the potential love of your life on the street and may never find them again.

That nagging ‘what if’ feeling has created a dating culture that all too often leads to empty and meaningless interactions. The majority of matches never lead to a message, much less a real-life date, and even if there is a conversation via message, it often comes to an abrupt stop for no apparent reason. The anonymity of online dating has made ‘ghosting’ an accepted modern phenomenon. I’m as guilty of it as the men I encounter, but it’s exhausting and dehumanising. Imagine meeting someone in a bar and exchanging pleasantries about your passions and interests only to have that person walk off in the middle of the conversation, never to return. We have learned to treat one another as disposable commodities. It’s partly due to the burden of choice — the constant search for something just a little bit better that will make us complete.

It’s easy to believe that having a perfect partner, the right clothes, the smoothest hair, or the most intriguing wall art will project an image to the world that will make people — or at least the tribe we want to belong to — accept us into the fold. And that’s exactly the way the advertising is tailored. Whether it’s L’Oréal selling hair products ‘because you’re worth it’, or Lexus, with their ‘passionate pursuit of perfection’, the aim is to push the idea that these purchases will fill the happiness gap. The advertising industry’s entire business model is based on a single premise: you are not enough. But if you buy this product, you just might be.

The frenzied scramble for more has led to heaving crowds queueing outside Australian department stores in the early hours of Boxing Day each year. In the United Kingdom and the United States, Black Friday sales have become so popular there have been stampedes and outbreaks of violence when doors open at major retailers. The day of heavy discounting has sparked chaotic scenes, with police deployed to break up brawls between sales junkies fighting over cut-price widescreen televisions and high-end sporting gear. In 2016, there were several shootings, including one fatality, at snap sales across the United States. Google ‘Black Friday violence’ and you’ll find a gallery of unedifying images that look more like refugees desperately scrambling for food parcels in a war-torn country than bargain-hungry shoppers looking for cheap electrical goods.

It’s a consumerist culture that goes hand in hand with the ‘crazy busy’ mentality, as people work themselves into the ground to keep up with an insatiable need to own more stuff. The more aspirational we become, the more we want. And so we work more to achieve that luxury car, that designer dress, that exotic holiday, or the dream house. It still amazes me that home renovation has become its own genre of entertainment. But it’s a fitting analogy for our times. Contestants spend three months frantically transforming a derelict block into a fantasy home, but then don’t live in it. They sell it for huge profit and move on to the next one. As psychologist Michael Carr-Gregg observed, ‘We’ve kind of fixed up everyone’s bathrooms and gardens and houses, now we also need to look at the inside.’

I’m lucky to have been in a financial position to buy my own apartment. It’s renovated and comfortable and I absolutely love it, but it’s small, and I’ve often fantasised about a bigger home, with a backyard and guest bedrooms. I imagine I’d be happier if I could sit out in the afternoon sun, or have a walk-in wardrobe or enough room for a companion for Hamish. Then I spoke to someone who had what I wanted and I began to see things differently.

Steph is a friend who grew up with Nonie in regional Victoria. As I got to know her over dinner one night, we began discussing happiness and what we need to make us fulfilled. Her story was an eye-opener. In 2012, she was pregnant with her second child and living with her partner and their two-year-old daughter in a house they shared with her brother and his small family. The only area Steph and her husband Dave could afford to buy a small two-bedroom apartment was an outer-eastern suburb of Melbourne. They were fixing it up and planned to move in before the baby was born when Steph got a phone call that changed everything. A $15 home lottery ticket had come good. She had won a $1.1 million four-bedroom, two-storey home in one of Melbourne’s most exclusive inner suburbs — fully furnished, mortgage-free, and council rates paid for the first year. The whole package was worth $1.4 million.

Steph was on a road trip with her mother and sister on the north coast of New South Wales when she received the call. ‘I burst into tears because I couldn’t remember buying the ticket and I thought it was a joke. I had my mum saying, “Just hang up. If it’s a crank call, just hang up.” By the time I worked out it was true it was completely overwhelming, and I spent the next 24 hours going between giggling stupidly to sobbing because it was such a life-changer.’

The house was in an area with an abundance of high-quality schools, and had a lush backyard packed with fruit trees and veggie beds. It was, said Steph, a ‘dreamboat win’. Working as a nurse doing punishing shift work in a hospital emergency department, she was able to contemplate a career change. She no longer had to work unsociable hours, and later found her niche nursing in the drug and alcohol sector. Overnight, the couple became property investors, financially comfortable enough to rent out the apartment they’d planned to live in, and began looking at acquiring a second unit, with an eye to securing their children’s future.

But then the unease crept in. When people heard about the windfall, they were divided into two camps. On one side were the friends who were thrilled, saying it couldn’t happen to a nicer family. On the other were people who questioned why they deserved such good fortune. ‘Initially I hadn’t felt like there was any merit in it. I’d bought a ticket and I’d won a raffle. It didn’t matter how big the prize was, the luck is the same,’ Steph recalled. ‘I was really surprised by people’s reactions about deserving it because I hadn’t contemplated it myself. But then it started eating into my thinking: well, was I deserving in a world where we were kind of doing okay as far as reaching life goals? Why us?’

It took some counselling for her to work through the feelings of guilt before she came to accept that the win was dumb luck, not divine providence. Suddenly, they were in a position they’d imagined they’d only be in come retirement.

Steph’s mother had been buying these charity raffle tickets since Steph was a child. Steph would look at the floorplans of the luxury homes and pick out a bedroom, imagining how happy she’d be if the lottery came good. Decades later, when she was actually living the fantasy, she realised something was missing. One night, she turned to her husband Dave and said, ‘We have everything we’ve ever wanted. Why do I feel like there’s no joy in my life?’ It was, Steph admits, ‘a pretty big kick in the nuts’ admitting to her partner — who was supposed to make up a big part of her fulfilment — that she was joyless. Yet, even with their unexpected windfall, life remained a mundane routine of child-rearing, work, and obligation. ‘I felt like there was something wrong with me. I felt like I wasn’t entitled to not feel joy because I had all this opportunity,’ she said. ‘After winning the house I think it gave me a different perspective. If you’re joyless in life but you’re working really hard towards something, it’s because you’ve got all this extra burden. But if all of a sudden that burden’s not there, why do you still not have joy in your life?’

It is the very essence of the hedonic treadmill. The plodding pursuit of a salve to soothe our woes. We think that our dissatisfaction comes from not having enough — from not being enough. When the journey is long and arduous, we imagine that reaching the destination will provide comfort. But as I discovered when my book was published, when you get to the endpoint and the discomfort remains, it can be deeply unsettling.

For Steph, it meant re-evaluating what she needed to have a meaningful life. ‘I felt like I was always chasing after family and work and the roster of a household rather than spending time on myself,’ she said. She got more counselling and worked with her therapist to have more realistic expectations of what happiness meant. ‘I had it all. The three pillars — marriage, kids, the home — that’s what we’re meant to strive for. But you talk to any parent, and having kids is a bloody gauntlet of hard work. I think you have to be a little bit delusional to seek complete joy out of just having a child.’ While winning the house did not bring instant happiness, she acknowledges it has given them financial security, which has been enormously comforting. And although the euphoric high that came in the months following the win has faded, she is still incredibly grateful. ‘It’s been four years now and there’s one part of the house where, if I walk down the stairs, I still get this overwhelming feeling of how completely insane it is that I won this amazing house. That has never gone away.’

Listening to Steph’s experiences reinforced what I was starting to realise: no amount of stuff could bring me the contentment I had long craved. There was no house big enough, car flash enough, or wardrobe expensive enough to make me whole. I started to focus on being grateful for what I had rather than wishing for more. And it helped me see that the noxious envy we sometimes feel for other people’s ‘perfect’ lives is often based on little more than a story.