on choice

do you ever get the feeling that you are not entirely satisfied with your life or that - well - whatever you do taht makes you happy only keeps you happy for a while? i do.

of course there's a lot still to do and achieve in life, no doubt about that one. and there's a lot of intense moments and feelings to experience still say if all goes well i still have 4-5 decades ahead of me for all of that. but i get the impression that i want to do so much more things than the ones there's real time for. in other words, i will always have the feeling that i haven't done all i want to no matter how hard i try.

RS: But dude, why don't you just downscale your ambitions? you only have 24 hours in each day anyway.
DM: True - i have tried doing that. But every day new things that i wanna do and be in the future - more books to read, places to travel, places to go and have a drink, sports to play, shows and films to watch, people to hang out with etc etc - pop up.

it's probably a characteristic of our era. and it's the price we pay for having more choices. some people would say "Ah, things used to be much easier in our parents' time, when they only had to survive and their only ambition was to get a job and have a good family". i don't enjoy being nostalgic. i think the previous generation would have loved to have all the choices we have around us, and in a way they have helped create these choices for us. but this comes at a cost, as there's really no decision without a price in life. i would say i like the era we live in, the era of choices but we have to educate ourselves on how to manage it and live simply again.

the price we pay for choice is this feeling of being unsatisfied.