06/05/2026
Last week I needed some black spray paint. I stopped in at my local hardware store and found eleven varieties. Not of paint in general mind you, but specifically black spray paint.
This is a problem. Not just for me, but for the universe.
I hadn't budgeted much time for paint shopping. My plan was to walk in the door, find the spray paint aisle (second on the right), pick up some black spray paint, pay, and walk out. Throw in a 30-second conversation about the weather with whoever was running the till, and we're talking two minutes, tops. Instead, I was almost locked up by indecision. It reminded me of the time a few decades ago when we had a Russian physicist working on our farm for the summer (don't ask) and we sent him to get some coffee at the grocery store. When he hadn’t come back long after a reasonable time had passed, we finally tracked him down in the coffee aisle, completely frozen in place by the choices. Apparently in Russia, at that time, there were two choices if you wanted coffee – coffee or no coffee.
I had a similar moment not long ago. I'd been sent to purchase, among other things, a box of Cheez-Its. I reached the cracker aisle and counted twenty-three varieties of Cheez-Its. I'm lucky I made it out alive.
Before I started writing this, I thought I’d better doublecheck to make sure I knew what I was talking about and found out that there are, in fact, nearly seventy varieties of Cheez-Its. I have a friend who stocks shelves part time in this store, and he was grumbling a little about the cracker aisle. I can't wait to tell him that things could be far worse.
Here's the thing. Having a quarter mile of cracker choices doesn't make us happier. There's an actual term for it: The Paradox of Choice. Faced with a near infinite amount of choice makes us overthink and can utterly paralyze us. When I served on the Board of Ordained Ministry for the United Methodist Church, one of the requirements for ordination was to film or record a sermon. One young woman was anxious about it and asked me if she should record a sermon when the church was full, like Easter or Christmas Eve, or whether it should be one where she tackled a tough bit of scripture, or perhaps a personal favorite. I said, “Just pick one. You shouldn't overthink this.”
She said, “I have a master's in divinity. I can overthink anything!” That was a while ago, but I still think about her words. She has a lot of company in this world. Too many times, I've climbed on the treadmill for twenty minutes of exercise and my time expires before I've decided what I want to watch on the tv while I walk.
Next time you're faced with a cascade of possibilities, try saying this under your breath. “Take what you can get, closest to what you want, and move on.” Then do it.
When my wife and I were youth leaders in our church, we chaperoned work projects in Jamaica, back in the 80s, and it seemed there were only four colors of paint in the country - a teal green, a soft red, yellow and blue. That's it. If you wanted to paint your house, those were your choices. Maybe it was because they were living in a tropical paradise, but most people seemed pretty happy to me. I don’t know if black was one of the other choices. If it was, I bet there was only one shade.
Copyright 2026 Brent Olson
