By Giles Fraser
“Black Americano, please.” A simple enough request to a barrista. But, oh, its not. I’m already grumpy. It’s too early for chat. But the questions keep coming. “Small, medium or large?” she replies. “Medium please” I grunt, hoping that will be the end of the matter. “Drink in or take away?” I reply. “Would you like milk with that?” I resist the temptation to refer my chirpy interrogator back to the original request for a black coffee. “No, thank you.”
Surely that’s enough information. But, no. “Would you like to try our new Guatemalan blend?” I decline, signalling growing irritation. “Would you like a pastry with that…” A list of various croissants and muffins follows. My mood darkens further. All I want is a bloody coffee.
Choice is the bane of modern life. “Existence preceeds essence”, preached the existentialists. What they meant was that who we are is not given at birth, but is constructed by the series of choices we make about who we want to be. “Become who you are”, said Nietzsche some decades before.
From this perspective, life is a never ending succession of choices, a constant work-in-progress of self-definition. We are the authors of our own identity. Mini gods of self-creation. Sartre liked to sit in coffee houses, musing on the meaning of life. But surely even he could not have reckoned with the ubiquity of choice in a consumerist society. I fancy that he, too, would have been broken by the ever-present demand to decide for oneself. As I sip my coffee, a semblance of calm begins to return. Existentialism is too heavy a burden. No more questions, please. I can’t take it any more. I don’t want to be endlessly responsible for me. I want someone else to shoulder the burden on my behalf.
Source: Unherd
