We live in a world of proliferating choice. A search for “men’s socks” on Amazon.com yielded over 80,000 results. 80,000+! Did anyone reading this ever anticipate having to choose between tens of thousands of options for socks, let alone anything else? I certainly did not.
This sparked my curiosity about a variety of other everyday items one might need:
Choice, the ability to make up your mind and change it, affects both natural and synthetic happiness differently. The freedom to choose among multiple attractive futures and find the one you will most enjoy is the friend of natural happiness. Natural happiness is derived from getting what you want. However, the freedom to choose and change your mind is the enemy of synthetic happiness. Synthetic happiness is how you deal with not getting what you want.
