–adjective
1.
adequate for the want or need; sufficient for the purpose or to satisfy desire: enough water; noise enough to wake the dead.
sur·feit [sur-fit]
–noun
1. excess; an excessive amount: a surfeit of speechmaking.
2. excess or overindulgence in eating or drinking.
3. an uncomfortably full or crapulous feeling due to excessive eating or drinking.
One ubiquitous TV commercial here asks a question that we all can relate to, "Why say 'OR' when you can say 'AND'?" It is an ad for a big, brawny buffet, instantly bringing to mind a target demographic that never has had much of a problem saying "AND," as it's loading its far-too-small plate with all manner of gooey damage. But I digress. As they digest.
Americans have always been rather obsessive-compulsive around matters concerning freedom of choice, which is one reason why our floor-to-ceiling supermarkets look a bit...well...fuller...than those of our Russian counterparts. Why we somehow need to have 1,000 different cereal options in each grocery store. Why it can turn into a seriously bad day when we hit the gelato stand and they offer just 65 varieties. I mean, come ON! This is, like, gelato stands in, like, a Siberian winter.
The Internet has brought all this choice to our fingertips. Options seem infinite, and another choice can always be teased out with a few more clicks.
With the result...if you're anything like me...of not utter joy, but...paralysis. I hear about a book. I go on Amazon to check it out. I read the review. Then just beneath it comes the parade of its cousins...the "Customers who bought this item also bought" list. Surely, you cheap bastard, you're not going to waste Amazon's time with a mere one-book purchase! OTHER customers--in fact, ALL the other customers we've had today--have shoveled at least 10 items into their shopping carts. And when the thought of having to decide between titles troubled them for a second or 2, they remembered that they live in The Land of And, and tossed every last one of them onto their platinum card.
Unfortunately my platinum card is living in the land of NOT. It landed there after I lived in The Land of And a little too long. And thus, I must make a choice. Which I cannot, in good conscience, make.
I pacify my kicking, screaming, book-wanting child by adding all the cousins to my wish list, which currently contains 360 items. It is the Las Vegas buffet of wish lists. And I am the bad martinet of a Weight Watchers' mother suggesting that choice is an appropriate...choice.
You see, while having a choice is powerful, not having to choose is ostensibly even more empowering...or at least, broadly appealing. And after living with all this Internet-fueled choice, I think a lot of us have broken pickers. Compromised. Severely ill. On the critical list. In this Web-created delusion of surfeit, we get overwhelmed by so many possibilities, so much potential. If that doesn't work out, try these 20 things. If those 20 things don't work out, try these 40. OK, I'm KO'ed. No. More. Options.
My mom once proved this theory with one of our most neurotic cats, Princess, whom she'd classically conditioned to be a royal basket case. Princess would walk into the kitchen, sniff the food, and turn up her nose at it, in classic cat style. My mother, a textbook kitty codependent if there ever was one, would then grab the can opener and pop open another can.
Princess of course would give it a quick sniff and turn up her pert, pink nose at it. This continued until my mother had exhausted most of the cans in the cupboard, a parade of dishes lined our kitchen linoleum, and a multifarious fishy smell informed the immediate neighborhood of her dark deeds. Had Princess taken the bait on any one of them? No, she had not. Was The Land of And being very, very good to her? Yes, it very much was.
Princess was overstimulated. (And a bit of a bitch.)
I am overstimulated. (Ditto.)
What we're looking at is a tapeworm. Our society has this long, ravenous, nutrition-sucking parasite slinking around its collective digestive tract, encouraging our natural human tendency toward, to use a very old-school but perhaps not inappropriate word, gluttony. Because we're not getting what we really want, we tend to fill up on cheap substitutes that may trick us into thinking we're full. Yet, like the hungry ghosts of Buddhist lore, we remain insatiable. We do not grasp the concept of enough, and then our not-enoughness eats us alive.
If I had to choose--which I hope I don't--I'd prefer the buffet.
