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Don’t judge a book by its cover. All that glitters isn’t gold. Be careful what you wish for, it might come true. Platitudes from previous generations embittered by the paucity of choice. Really, who cares if a book isn’t as good as its cover when you can just move on to the next cover? After all, care only needs exercising in a world of scarcity, and our generation has never faced that. We just move from one choice to the next, like a triple-dipped tortilla chip from the guacamole to the Tapatio to the Cholula. (Sorry if the Mexican food references don’t mean that much to you, but I’m a Californian.)

Nevertheless, there I sat, a choister, 0-2, facing choicelessness. I had spent the better part of the previous week debating which job I would accept, the coolness of the tech company in Palo Alto, or the big money of the stodgy investment bank in San Francisco. The choice proved difficult and it consumed my every waking moment—until I learned that I won neither!

Perhaps our generation would have developed the kind of meaningful (but much slicker) provisos that our forebears articulated had we faced harder times earlier that forced us to encounter less choice. Perhaps I would have faced my job situation better armed; or, at least, with more perspective. Maybe I would have never jumped into the Wall Street pit if I had learned to analyze situations beyond their superficial luster. Maybe I would have known better than to fall for that swimsuit model who, I later learned, wanted to dress me in her dirty bra and panties and violate me with a strap-on. Maybe fewer choices will teach me to make better ones… or maybe I’ll call Julia again. I mean, she is a swimsuit model.

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