When nothing has to be given up

Most of what we used to decide involved giving something up.

One film at the cinema meant not seeing the other. Spending on a dinner out meant not spending it on the shoes. A single cassette for the long drive to Taif meant listening to that one, all the way there and all the way back. The cost was the point. Because we paid for the choice with the thing we did not pick, the thing we did pick mattered.

Now the evening on the sofa offers no such trade. Every series is there. Every song is there. Finish one thing and the next one has already started playing, and the one after that is waiting behind it. Nothing has to be given up, so nothing has to be chosen.

It sounds like freedom, and in a narrow sense it is. But a choice without a cost quietly loses its weight. The hours stop being spent and start being used up. The evening does not end with a film we will talk about tomorrow. It ends with a vague sense of having watched something, and a tiredness that has no particular source.

This matters to anyone selling into that abundance. A customer who no longer has to decide is not loyal, and not unloyal either. They are simply drifting, and drift does not remember names.

It matters more to the rest of us, as people.

There is a small discipline in choosing on purpose even when the system does not demand it. One film tonight, and the screen goes off after. One album, start to finish. Not because the supply ran out, but because a choice we make deliberately is one we actually get to keep.