Excerpt: Choices, from Chapter 1

Another short excerpt of 30 Isn't Old, is found below. Please enjoy "Choices", from Chapter 1

Our mothers and grandmothers fought to give us options, to give
us choices. We have the option to get married or not, to have children
or not, to work in any field we want from acting to zoology as long
as we are willing to work for what we want. With such freedom and
opportunity before us, it is possible for anyone to be anxious. With
endless options it can be difficult to narrow them down and there is
no one else to blame if we make the wrong choice. Few before our
generation had so much choices in determining their own path and
success in this life. Now we have enough choice to be overwhelmed
by them all.

By the time a woman reaches age thirty she has made millions
of decisions. From the smallest decisions of how long to stay in the
shower in the morning and should she wear nail polish today to the
large decisions of should she go to college or get married and have
children. Each of these decisions large and small has potential consequences
and sacrifices. For instance, the woman who decides to take
an extra fifteen minutes in the shower in the morning has to either
wake up fifteen minutes early which means sacrificing fifteen minutes
of sleep or she may have to skip breakfast or be late to work due to the
extra fifteen minutes shower time. Alternately, the woman who does
not choose to take the extra fifteen minutes in the shower may decide
to spend those minutes in bed, eating a bagel, taking extra care with
her makeup or conversing with her child over breakfast instead of hustling
them both out the door to start the day. Each small decision has
consequences negative and positive. The same is true for all decisions
we make each day.

When the rewards and consequences of each decision we make
is multiplied by the number of decisions we make each day it is
easy to be overwhelmed every day. Barry Schwartz, author of The
Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less, used the analogy of buying
jeans to represent the overabundance of choice in our lives. Before
we were born the most important decision to be made about buying
jeans was color – dark or light. Size was predetermined by the
wearer’s body. In the 1970’s designer labels bombarded consumers
so that status became another concern when buying jeans. A
woman in Jordache or Calvins was presented in popular culture as
more sophisticated than the women whose jeans sported no label
or that of a department store brand.

In thirty years buying jeans has become exponentially more
complicated. Oprah once had a special episode on her show to
teach women how to buy the right fit for their bodies. She wasn’t
talking about size or leg length; she was talking about the thousands
of variations from leg cut (wide, boot, tapered), rise (classic,
at the waist, low, ultra low), washes (dark, light, worn in certain
areas and every shade in between) and cut (boy, straight, curvy,
relaxed). These variations are available at hundreds of stores
across the country. The choices for men are fewer (they aren’t
likely to be concerned with ultra low rise or avoiding mom-cut
jeans) but as Mr. Schwartz pointed out in his book, the process of
finding the right pair is arduous for men and women. He said “as
the number of choices keeps growing, negative aspects of having
a multitude of options begin to appear. As the number of choices
grows further, the negatives escalate until we become overloaded.

At this point, choice no longer liberates, but debilitates.” With all
the options in denim a woman could spend weeks trying on jeans
at stores across town before she found the best fit and then there’s
no guarantee they won’t shrink in the wash. There’s also no guarantee
that she won’t become exhausted before she finds what she’s
looking for.

I own at least ten pair of jeans, in four different sizes depending
on my weight fluctuation. Each purchase required at least three
stores and more than an armful of options at each store to try on
before I was satisfied. Some sit in the back of my closet because
after wearing them a few times they just weren’t quite right anymore.
On average, at any given time or weight, I wear two pair
and alternate them with the rest of my wardrobe. The rest stay in
the back of the closet or in a box under the bed where clothes that
don’t fit now but may one day reside. I shudder to think how much
time, money and energy I’ve wasted over the years buying jeans I
don’t wear.

In the grand scheme of our lives buying jeans cannot be considered
a major decision. The anxiety created by such a small
choice magnifies for major choices.