Crikey, I Didn't Choose the Fish Tacos!

Something strange happened to me tonight.
You may not think it very striking or of any importance.
Here it is - I didn't choose fish tacos!!

Pow! Bam! Wham! Yikes!

Everyone knows that I always, always, always choose Daniel's fish tacos. Always.
Comment away, but I do.
Tonight I didn't.
I made another choice.

Listen to this line from a stretching book I am working through:

"The burden of choice is a peculiarly modern phenomenon."

You could argue that the freedom to choose is one of the great signs of progress in modern life.
Those who live in abject poverty worry very little about which kind of food to eat precisely because there are no choices before them.

They would not see choice as a burden, but as a blessing.

My argument is, it is never a blessing, it is always a burden.

Its is our contemporary nihilism (as Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly term it in All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age.)
Choice, even in the most basic case, amounts to profound questions, questions that revolve around how possible it is to live a meaningful life.

To live a meaningful life always returns to the ultimate question - 'on what basis do I make a choice ....even the most basic of choices, even choosing Hearty Omelette over my regular, loved, favorite Fish Tacos?'

For Ancients and Middle Agers life was already defined. Circumstances defined it. Things were unchangeable. Additionally, there was a belief system that whether or not you believed in God or gods, there was one framework, one system, one defining reality.

For the modern world ........ nothing is defined.
Everything then is a choice.
Every choice therefore defines.
Every definition makes up the fullness of who we are.

That makes choice a burden.
Even the choice of food.

Sitting tomorrow at Daniel's restaurant choosing from the menu is an existential life defining moment.

Every choice counts.
Every choice has a basis.

Remember Hamlet's famous soliloquy "To be or not to be, that is the question."

This is your choice.