Back in 1785, the English poet William Cowper wrote “Variety’s the very spice of life, That gives it all its flavour.” If Mr. Cowper could have seen into the future 200 years, I wonder if he would have changed that to “Variety’s the very spice of life, yet it overwhelms us in excess.”
In our modern world, we love having extensive choices and options all at our finger tips. Here in the United States especially, we are lucky and privileged to rarely feel that we are lacking in possibilities. It is a beautiful thing to be able to pick and choose everything from what we wear to how we spend our free time, to any number of goods we purchase.
Yet I wonder if at some point, when does so much turn into too much? Simply walk down the breakfast food lane in a grocery store, and the cereal boxes literally run the entire length of the aisle. Is it really necessary to have so many options that it can take 15 minutes to make a selection? This past weekend I realized that the second place contender in the Ridiculous Quantity of Varieties race is the frozen meals section. The cooler units are bulging with cardboard boxes containing heat ‘n eat meals from Lean Cuisine, Healthy Choice, Marie Callender, Swanson, and other brands I’ve never heard of. I found myself standing there, staring through the glass trying to pick out a couple to use as lunches for work, or for after school snacks for my son. Another woman came up behind me and I apologized for dawdling. She and I agreed that if there were just three to choose from, we’d be on our way much faster. When I was a kid, the only options were “tv dinners” by Hungry Man, Morton and Banquet. And they all basically looked like turkey or meatloaf with gravy and mashed potatoes.
Speaking of food, one of the fastest ways to overwhelm me in a restaurant is to hand me a bound, multi-page menu. This really seems to be a trend at this point. Gone are the days of a single-sided laminated card with a handful of options. Now it is like opening up a bedtime story book with several chapters. Gosh, don’t feel pressured while the waiter is standing next to you, ready to take your order, and you are only on page 8 and have not even had a chance to narrow down your preferences. You finally make your selection, close the cover of the food novel in your lap, and then realize there are two supplemental publications on the table, telling tall tales of available beverages and desserts.
Of course these are all First World Problems, and we need to be grateful for all we have. But really, isn’t there some point where it just isn’t necessary to have more and more of something? This evening I decided to treat my sad stubby fingernails to a manicure. As I sat down, the nail technician handed me the available options of Gel Nail color. There were literally approximately 130 colors to choose from. And that was just for that variety of polish. It did not include the regular, acrylic, 3-D designs, and who knows what else. Come on, ladies, can’t we find a color we like out of, say, 50? That would still be enough to choose a different color for nearly every week of the year.
Maybe it’s just me, but when I’m faced with so many options and choices, I start to glaze over. I start to long for the days when we had 4 TV channels, simple dinner selections, and a handful of cosmetics from Avon. I start to wish I had an angel on my shoulder who would whisper “pick that one”, and I’d be happy with that choice. I’m not sure if the multitude of possibilities in front of us every day is a sign that we all have a touch of ADD, or that we all are desperate to carve out our own unique style, or we just get bored really, really easily. No matter the reason, there seems to be no end in sight. Literally.
So rather than fight it, perhaps I need to channel my inner Mae West, and her famous assertion that “Too much of a good thing can be wonderful.”
After all, tonight I chose nail color #102.
Like many real women, I put a fairly good amount of effort into trying to make healthy food choices. I eat lots of veggies and fruit, I avoid breaded and fried foods, I cook with low- or no-fat ingredients, I limit eating desserts, and don’t really remember the last time I sat down to a big ol’ bowl of ice cream.
We live in a world of cyberslang, internet acronyms, and a whole generation of youth who communicate via abbreviations, meme’s and emoji’s. Somewhere along the way, a new language emerged, full of LOL, BRB and YOLO. Nothing makes me feel older than having to ask my teenage son what a group of seemingly nonsensical letters means.
This afternoon as I drove to a Doctor’s appointment, I pondered on how no matter what type of doctor, or what type of appointment we have, the process is always pretty much the same. It could be for a routine physical, it could be for the flu, it could be for an injured knee, or like me today, it could be for a pre-colonoscopy consultation. (Oh boy, I can barely contain my excitement over reaching this milestone.) Whatever the reason, the experience yields few surprises.
ant to do is make you step up on the scale. I hate this part. Really? Must I? I step up and instantly start trying to calculate how much my clothing and shoes must weigh to make myself feel better about the number that appears.
I’m a bit ambivalent about St. Patrick’s Day. I have nothing against it. But I don’t whole-heartedly and excitedly embrace it, either. I figure this is mostly because, as far as I know, I have not one drop of Irish in me. Other than by relation to my husband, who has enough Irish in him to enjoy a glass of Jameson’s with his annual plate of corned beef and cabbage. I’m quite sure that if I was Irish, I’d be all in and I’d celebrate this festive day full throttle. After all, I’m still waiting for someone to create Swiss-Scottish-English-and-whatever-else day – or, perhaps, let’s just make it Melting Pot Day, so the rest of us who are made up of a veritable cornucopia of cultural backgrounds can all have a “celebrate my heritage” day.
A couple of weeks ago, the Huffington Post shared an image and brief story about how a man had asked his wife to draw, or write down, everything that was going on in her mind. I find it a little hard to believe a husband would ever ask this, but it made for a good topic. The resulting image was not at all surprising to any of us Real Women – for any of us who saw it, our response was basically “yup, that’s about right.” Yet it was somewhat amusing and interesting to “see” a sample of a woman’s thoughts at one moment in time, all spilled out onto a sheet of paper.
Real Women 