Tuesday, 22 September 2009
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One Flavor For the Rest of Your Life?
P.B. Fitzwater once wrote; “Character is the sum and total of a person's choices.”
In today's world, we love our choices because, basically, choices come along with freedom and democracy and should they be violated; Actions will be taken! We love to have the opportunity to choose and any company that makes money worth counting has taken advantage of this at some point.
The thing is, I’ve been thinking about all these choices and couldn't help but wonder if they sometimes cause us more damage than good. We are always so obsessed with keeping our options or 'doors' open that we are constantly looking for something better and never really able to enjoy what we have. This can often be seen in relationships. How someone will be dating more than one person at a time just so the person is sure they’ve made the right decision.
Nothing wrong with wanting to be sure, the problem though is that the right choice never feels like the right choice if you keep obsessing about whether or not you could have made a better decision. So you date this person and then that person and then a hundred more and then suddenly you've dated too many to remember what you were looking for in the first place. Suddenly you're left with this illusion of what you want; "John had perfect teeth, Steve was just the right height and Tony was such a gentleman but James was so daring and exciting,.. mmm now all I have to do is find someone that embodies all these qualities and more, then I’m set to go!" and on her grave they wrote 'Jane, beloved daughter, sister and wonderful cat owner’ Depressing, I know.
Okay. So 50 years ago, a school in a little town in England had only one thing on their launch menu, soup and bread with butter, 50 years later, trying to keep up with other schools the menu flourished with options. There were salads, drinks and each meal wasn’t allowed to be repeated more than once a week. Odd enough, the students had more to complain about and were less content with the option of food then they had been 50 years ago. Strange, don’t you think?
In one of Friends most awesome episodes, Ross had just been dumped by his lesbian wife when in an effort to comfort him, Joey tells him to grab a spoon and start tasting all the flavors the world has to offer. The annoying part though is, with all the flavors in this world and millions more mixed every day, will someone ever be able to stay faithful and content with one flavor? And does the more you taste lessen your chances of ever being content with one? If so, could having sex or too many sexual experiences in general forever endanger your chances of ever being happy and satisfied once married?
Wow, so many things to consider. How would you answer these questions though? What do you think about these open doors and choices we make day in and out?... I guess the question is; to choose or not to choose?
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- From: Maesworld@xanga
- Name: Maesworld
- About Me: There is a reason for every season,.. what can i say? I'm still waiting for the perfect sentence.
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Comments (22)
Personally I will always choose the Oriental Buffet because:
1.) Variety is the spice of life and:
2.) Oriental chicks are HOT!!!
hmm tough question indeed. I don't see the harm in making choices and I actually think it's better to experience what's out there before you regret you didn't try other flavors. Although be careful of being too picky because no one is perfect and if you spend too long looking for that perfect guy, you may end up being 50, single with 100 cats.
How about having a close friend monitor you so don't become flavor crazed to the point of losing your taste buds? Or you can always write down your goals and keep them by you to remind you of what you're looking for?
Lol what happens when you have your taste buds burned to the point when you can no longer taste??
Anyways, I just go with the flow as long as I don't think it's very likely I can do better.
"Can I find a guy out there who won't lie to me continuously for more than three years about what he does with a particular female friend of his?"
I had a pretty easy time deciding whether or not my last boyfriend was worth it.
mm i have thought about this. idk. i'm not a very "need to try everything" - i mean when it comes to food maybe, but i'm also sort of a routine person. there are only 3 flavors of oatmeal i like. and only a couple of ice creams i like. i'm pretty particular, i guess. so idk.
haha who knows, i love my boyfriend now and hope that it lasts, but who the hell knows what the future will bring. seriously? nobody.
Good way of comparing it. Maybe I'm missing out on all the flavors now, but when I pick one, I won't be comparing it to how much better another one was...
I love this post. When I first met my SO, who also happens to be my first, one of my friends joked that I have to try the other flavors out there. I now understand what he meant.
VERY good blog.. very thought provoking.. .well done!
I think with all the choices of the world at our fingertips, i think we would be foolish to not be picky. However, I think our worst enemy is the fact that we have no idea what we want. And I think that is what hurts us in the end. Like you said, having the roster of 15 different people and having the likes and dislikes makes you be a bit of a nut. However, if you know what you want before hand, and know what you're willing to compromise on before hand makes all the difference. If the person you're considering has 90% of the qualities that you want.. then all you have to worry about is compromising with the other 10% ... and is that 10% worth compromising over? I mean... if we're choosing a mate here, its kindof a big deal...so we really should know what we want before we start choosing... I wouldn't think that this sort of thing should be left up to frivelous chance
Good post. (: I don't really think about it like that because once I found my boyfriend all of the other "flavors" seemed to not matter anymore.
sour apple!!!!
I found the right flavor the first time around.
and I don't worry about what I'm missing out on, because I know i'm not missing anything.
"Sometimes we wish for the better, when we have it good as it gets."
I forgot where i got that quote, but your post reminded me of it.
I like a lot of different flavors. Strawberry, cheesecake, chocolate, vanilla, chocolate chip cookie dough. Relationship-wise? I dont know about testing other "flavors".. i havent been in the relationship game long enough to give an exact answer.
It's just like going to an ice cream shop. You try a few flavors, and once you FEEL like you've tried it all, you just pick. I mean there will always be the possibility that there is a flavor that is BETTER than the one you picked, but if it is good enough to keep you content, who cares?
It's impossible to try all the flavors. I guess in terms of relationships, ignorance is bliss sometimes.
People aren't food.
Even if you choose not to choose, you're still choosing. There's no way around making decisions.
Every choice you make should inevitably lead you somewhere better or towards the ultimate goal of finding what you want from what's available to you.
When people start to question whether this is the best they can have, that's when things usually become unsatisfying. People rarely take it a day at a time, so they're causing themselves to miss out while thinking they're missing out.
Somewhere in the middle, surely? You can't taste every flavour, and nor should you seek to, but its good to get out there and have a little look at what there is. Having said that, if you are perfectly happy and content with your flavour, why seek another?
Great post.
Interesting analogy with the school kids. Also, this can apply to Americans in general. Americans, no matter what your socioeconomic class, have among the highest standards of living in the world. And yet, Americans are among the least happy as well (relatively). I've been to several poor countries, and it struck me how many people are generally happier than Americans (of course, not counting extreme poverty or war-torn countries).
"If so, could having sex or too many sexual experiences in general
forever endanger your chances of ever being happy and satisfied once
married?"
I actually think it can. Ultimately, I believe the fewer the partners...the better. (I'd be curious to see some research and statistics on this very topic. Perhaps the marriage success rate vs. # of sexual partners.)
However, it also depends on each person and how they are. Some people need to be more experimental, some people are more curious, etc. So I think it really depends on each individual.
But I just think of it this way. It's GENERALLY harder to go from something "better" to something worse. Ever had to go from a higher salary to a lower salary? Move from a bigger house to a smaller worse house? Used to drive Mercedes and BMWs and now have to drive a Corolla (no offense to Corolla drivers =) )? The thing is...whatever it is....it's always a little difficult to go from better to worse.
Now of course, this is a little different with people. But the point is, the same principles CAN apply... and it's effect is different among individuals.
Whenever someone tells me that they're afraid their relationship may not work out because they are thinking about other people, or they like someone else, I tell them the same thing. "Ask yourself if what you have is a good thing, do you love her/him? are there any major problems?" If the answers are acceptable, be content with what you have, because chances are, any "exciting" new thing out there is not going to surpass what you already have. And you'll just float around forever.
i definitely understand where you are coming from. my best friend is a crazy girl who is definitely doing her best to try all the flavors which is destroying her life and her own self-image, but despite all the heart ache it is bringing her (and she knows it) she still thinks that me getting married at twenty is the immature thing to do because me and my fiance aren't sampling all the flavors before we choose one another. my thought is, i don't want that though, sometimes I worry that he will, but i am sure that he is my mr. perfect and i have never desired the life she is living, and do i need to kiss a bunch of frogs to affirm in my own mind that he is a prince? no, i think that he has proved that already without a back drop of comparison.
Ahhh... I avoid asking myself these things. I can never make up my mind...
That is precisely why I believe relationships will never last forever. Because people why to try different things, if they had one flavor for too long, no matter how much they love it, they can get bored of it.
Not that I would know, I've never been in a relationship, but I say this as an ice cream connoisseur. :D
- Kunoichi
I think you can try a little bit of it all,you just have to decide that there's always one taste that's the best,and that you can't constantly question yourself.
great post, this is something that everyone should think about..
a variety of choices only make you want more.