Why more abundance doesn't mean more freedom.
Put yourself in the shoes of a young person growing up in a small rural village of eighteenth-century midwestern America.
You don’t know anyone who is “rich”, per se. Almost everyone in your community works in some sort of trade labor: farming, lumbering, blacksmithing, tailoring, etc.
It’s a small world. Everyone knows everyone. There aren’t many food options. You probably have no more than 5 changes of clothes. You may hardly ever travel more than 50 miles beyond the village borders, unless you’re a traveling merchant.
You don’t really have lots of options. For anything.
It makes me wonder… How much would you struggle with your career choice?
Most likely you would pick up your father’s or mother’s trade, or maybe your uncle’s. If you’re really adventurous, you could visit your neighbor on the other side of the village and apprentice with them.
But you really wouldn’t have more than 10 options to cycle through.
You wouldn’t have the option to make a career switch from mechanical engineering to software development, or maybe to filmmaking if you’re feeling artsy.
And what about dating?
You might have a matchmaker do the job for you. And even if you were to go looking for yourself around the village, you would have a small pool of eligible young men or women of marriageable age who are from a decent family. (And you would probably have grown up with them anyway)
Never in your life could you have imagined thumbing through a virtually endless list of faces from all around the country on a quest for a life partner. How ironic that the dating apps that promised to make finding a partner easier than ever have made choosing one harder than ever.
What should I wear today?
Where should I go for vacation?
What do I want to eat?
What should I watch on Netflix?
None of these would be real questions in your eighteenth-century village life.
But today, you have abundance.
You can spend 30 minutes browsing the “For You” list of Netflix shows.
You can pick from your 20 outfits.
You can find 50 food options within 10 minutes of your house.
And tell me… Have they made life happier?
They promised convenience. But has life become easier?
They promised freedom of choice. But has the task of choosing become freer?
Or have you lied awake at night wondering which college to attend?
Or struggled between multiple love interests because you didn’t want to give any of them up?
Or scrolled through another one of those “Which Career Is Best For Me” articles during one of your regular quarter-life crises?
Interestingly, the more abundance of options we have, the more we struggle with existential questions like “What am I supposed to do in life?”
Don’t get me wrong: I love options.
Technology has made life more convenient in so many ways. Society has advanced to the point where I can pick up an online order at Chipotle, lounge at my favorite coffee shop with my laptop under air-conditioning, and drive to see a friend 30 miles away — all in one day.
It's the reason I'm glad I moved to the city. I have more things to experience and ways to get involved and active.
And it's a good thing that everyone is objectively richer today than they were three hundred years ago.
But we constantly have been sold a lie. A lie that we repeat to ourselves.
That more options means more freedom. That abundance means more happiness.
When you have 20 restaurant options staring back at you on the DoorDash app, how easily can you choose what to have for dinner?
It’s like the popular grocery aisle example. Having only three cereal options on the shelves makes the decision task a lot quicker than if there are ten.
Abundance is also an illusion of happiness, because we merely have more things to give ourselves dopamine kicks with. Abundance = more dopamine. Not happiness. Not joy. Not contentment.
Such is the curse of abundance.
But abundance is not the villain. It’s our relationship with it.
When we realize the solution is the detaching of our happiness from our material wealth, when we experience how our joy and contentment is cultivated as a state of mind independent of our options, we start treating abundance quite differently.
It is no longer the goal of life, but a tool. Heck, even a state of being.
The abundance mindset is generous, forgiving, and free of worry.
It is free to love, to commit, to let go, to change, to try something new, and to stay the same. It is free to choose.
Stay purposeful.
– Nathanael
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