Brain-Frying Exercises

During the past few months, my wife and I have been engaged in the most trivial of pursuits, as we've been making choices regarding the renovation of our apartment. Our contractor tells us that the work will be done in a few weeks and that we can move back before Rosh Hashanah, which falls at the end of the month. But we're still in the thick of decision-making. Recently, for example, we ordered window blinds and curtains. Last week, we bought a mattress and a bed, and this week saw us buying shower curtains and towel racks. Each of these purchases necessitated research, thought, and discussion, for the choices available are almost endless.

Barry Schwartz has written of the tyranny of choice, in his book of the same name. We were untroubled by that tyranny when we renovated our apartment in Jerusalem in 1975. The choices in finishes such as tiles and countertops were so few that we went away for the summer, while most of the work was being done, and let our architect and contractor make those decisions.

Nor were we bothered by the tyranny of choice when we furnished our home in Addis Ababa in 1968. The Ford Foundation, my employer, paid for the furniture, since subsequent employees and their families would use it, but we had to make the choices ourselves. This was easy because there was so little to choose from. There were, as I recall, only three types of upholstered chair at the town’s principal furniture store.

But the choices available today are stupefyingly numerous, even within a given price range, whether for floor tiles, wall tiles, kitchen and bathroom countertops, kitchen and bathroom cabinets, towel racks, bathroom and kitchen faucets, showerheads, bathroom vanities, door and cupboard handles, lighting fixtures, or window treatments. The head swims and the brain fries in dealing with it all.

I’m lucky in that I don’t need to look at everything before making up my mind. If it’s good enough, I’m satisfied. My wife’s doesn’t search for perfection either, but she’s more particular than I am and more fearful of making a mistake, so it usually takes her longer to decide. I tease her about this. This would be mean of me even if, as a result of her persistence, what she selects were not almost unfailingly excellent.

We look forward to moving back to our apartment and making it habitable. I worry, though, that after the brain-frying exercises in which we’ve been engaged - this tile or that tile, this color or that color - we won't ever be able to talk intelligently about anything ever again, even if we're able to find anything else to talk about.

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