THE NEVER-ENDING MENU

I spent a while trying to read The Cheesecake Factory’s menu today. I’d always heard of its wonder, how whatever it is you want, they probably have it or something close to it. And clearly, they’re doing something right; the restaurant in Milwaukee is always busy and there’s usually a line going out the door.

You’ve got to figure the food is decent if people are willing to stand outside in Milwaukee in the dead of winter for it.

I don’t think, however, that we’ll be visiting there any time soon. First of all, I doubt I can afford four meals there right now. Second of all, while the menu is wonderful, I cannot even fathom how long it would take us all to figure out what we wanted. If we got there early for lunch, we might have it all figured out in time for a late dinner.

You can’t really blame The Cheesecake Factory for its Everlasting Gobstopper of a menu. There’s a certain value in throwing out a broad net. If nothing else, it makes you a good last resort for indecisive groups:”Let’s just go to The Cheesecake Factory; if you can’t find something you want there, you’re probably not hungry anyway.”

The real problem, though, is lurking in the shadows. How do you even start to choose when you can choose from anything? If there’s been a theme to my academic and spiritual life, that’s it. Life is a menu, and the waiter wants your order, so decide.

When I was in high school, I couldn’t figure out which way to go with my life. I knew I was bound for college and not the military or the job market, but that’s where the clarity ended. So I used to ask people what they thought I should do with my life. And I always got the same answer, more or less: “You should do whatever you want to do. If you put your mind to it, you can do anything!”

I go looking for advice, I get the Cliffs Notes version of “Up With People.” Thanks. I knew I could do whatever I wanted; the problem was, I didn’t know what I wanted. I wasn’t looking for someone to make the decision for me; I just wanted some opinions. Maybe somebody saw something in me that I hadn’t yet seen in myself. That’s what I wanted to know.

Nobody can make that sort of decision for you, any more than somebody can tell you what you want for dinner. And I was fortunate in that my parents would’ve been just as happy with me if I’d become a plumber as they were that I became a pastor. So long as I really wanted to be a plumber, that is.

But again: How do you choose when you can choose from anything?

Choice is good, but too much choice can be paralyzing. Too much choice leads to that downward spiral of analysis, overanalysis, information fatigue, and resignation. First you lose your desire to choose; then you lose your ability to choose; finally, you lose the possibility of choice and things are just chosen for you. Instead of engaging your life, your career, your family, or whatever, you wind up just letting things happen to you. At least that way, you don’t have to make a choice. But you never realize that you don’t get to make a choice, either.

In our post-modernist times (assuming we still live in them), ruling out possible choices has become a lost art. Nobody wants to close the door on anything. We don’t understand the reality of the opportunity cost involved in making decisions: If you pick the Southwest Pizza Fingers for your entree, you give up the chance to have the Cajun Stir-Fried Meatballs; if you spend four years of college studying video-game design, you won’t learn much about Keats or Wittgenstein or how to grow dahlias in a greenhouse. And vice versa, of course. You may hate this reality, but you can’t get around it.

Not that we don’t try to get around it, of course. Some people are like me: they look at the menu and try to figure out what gives them the most. The most what? Doesn’t matter! I just want muchness. Others will try to string four or five side dishes together into a meal of some sort, even though they wind up without a theme or a central defining work. Still more will simply refuse to decide in the hopes that later on they can go somewhere else where the possiblities are more enticing. (These last are the ones who wind up on the couch late at night, eating Raisin Bran straight from the box, deeply peeved that they never got their dinner.)

Blessed, however, is the one who can find one good thing–and then chooses it. They’re like the one person at every table who gets what everybody else wishes they had ordered. Bill Simmons has noted this phenomenon with regards to the reuben sandwich: you never think of ordering it yourself, but when it comes to the table, you always wish you had.

Sometimes we don’t make choices because they’re too obvious. Sometimes we don’t choose certain things because we feel they limit us too much. Sometimes we turn our back on some life choices because we feel like what we really want isn’t good enough for us; we should want more, even if we really don’t want more.

I read in a book once (I think it was this one) about a TV talk show where a diet expert put a lavish buffet out in front of the host and asked him to close his eyes, pick the one food that would satisfy him the most, and then eat it. The host was allowed as much time as he needed to make his choice. He closed his eyes for a couple minutes, then walked over to the buffet and made himself a roast-beef sandwich with mustard and mayo. The diet expert asked him if he really wanted more food, or if he was satisfied with what he had chosen. The host admitted that he was.

This doesn’t just work with food, although it does work beautifully with the buffet/overindulgence problem. It actually works with any choice you have to make, or at least it always has for me. When I couldn’t decide whether I was going to seminary or going after a PhD, I closed my eyes and wondered if I’d regret not making one choice more than I’d regret not making the other. I found that I would. That’s how I wound up at seminary–not because some flaming plant started talking to me, not because some giant fish puked me up at the corner of Como and Hendon in St. Paul, but because I knew if I didn’t try seminary first, I’d always wonder what life would have been like if I had. I could not see myself wondering the same thing about getting a PhD. (True to form, I’ve pretty much concluded now that I don’t really want one.)

Clarity does not come from looking at all possible choices equally. Satisfaction doesn’t come from keeping your options open as long as possible. Clarity and satisfaction come from realizing that the most important thing about any choice you make is that it has to be yours. Nobody else is going to eat your dinner. Nobody else is going to make your car payment for the next five years. Nobody else is going to be married to your spouse (at least not at the same time you are).

Nobody else is going to live your life for you. There are people who will be glad to make decisions for you–but they never have your best interest at heart.

And now, after all this time, I realize why nobody could or would answer my question for me back in high school. They did see something in me that I never saw in myself: They saw that I’d already made my decision; I just didn’t realize it yet. There’s more to that story, of course.

(Oh, and if you must know: Jamaican Black Pepper Shrimp.)