The Paradox of Choice - Modernity and Travel

http://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_choice.html

First, watch this TED talk.

I think this condition is what is ailing so many of the people my age, coupled with the recent opening expanse of freedom that gets thrown into our hands during a breif, and surreal formality of May (sometimes June...some even January!). The TED talk was reccomended to me by a new friend, and then the day after I watched it, Barry actually came onto The Colbert Report as I was watching it, too! This stuff is just being drilled into my head. I mean, literally, as he expounded on the Colbert floor, I was mouthing right along with him. It's true, though, this idea that more choice, more freedom, isn't necessarily always better, and that sometimes people flounder in and/or are overwhelmed by the seeming infinity availible to them. It takes forever to make a decision. You have a much more likely chance of being unsatisfied, because there are 3498 things you didn't do; there are 892 options you didn't take. So your choice could have been THAT much better, or you could have experienced 6262 more things.

Soph recently send me breif thoughts on the infinite freedom of travel and the happiness or at least the feeling of unfulfillment that it sometimes brings along with it, is THIS (above). And then those that I DO see fully, 100% engaged and ecstatic, content in the transient existence, potent, breif, then fleeting moments, are those who have been disallusioned prior and are therefore happy to be escaping, starting over, finding themselves (disallusioned both politically, and personally), do a lot of drugs (ill let u interpret THEIR 'happiness' on ur own terms), are happi[er] than they would be where they came from (bitterness).

Sometimes I wonder if Happiness is only entirely relative. Maybe JOY is something more than the sum of us, reaching up and beyond. Happiness refers back. Does it always get it's meaning by comparing, through negation? Look: "I'm happy, sitting here in this big leather chair, sipping lemonade a.k.a. I'm happy because I'm NOT mowing the lawn and Alex is doing it instead".

I'll be thinking about this rather intensely. I must. This is one of my fatal flaws: that I want nearly EVERYTHING, and so I dip into everything, but I don't get it all. I never can get it all if I want the WORLD, instead of educational reform, for example.
Yet it leaves me with a little bit of a million things, and a LOT of fire, which I guess is what makes me me. But I am insane.