If Variety Is the Spice of Life, Make Mine Bland

My love for the "same-old, same-old" (which abbreviates, quite appropriately, to "SO-SO") is well-documented here, I think. Until today, I always thought I was just a stick-in-the-mud with mild obsessive compulsive tendencies who had an affinity for a place for everything and everything in its place.

It appears my quest for predictability has deeper roots:

http://www.cbc.ca/consumer/story/2008/04/15/choices.html

Apparently, researchers have confirmed what I've long suspected - too much choice is hard on one's brain.

Fortunately for the few brain cells I have left, I've discovered a number of ways to reduce excessive levels of choice in my life. I make one pot of soup on Sunday nights and - voila! - lunch for an entire week. We have tacos every Friday night and - presto! - one less meal to have to plan each week. I stay out of shopping malls entirely, and so never have to worry about choosing between the latest fashions. I am a vegetarian, and thus reduce the number of viable options on most restaurant menus to three.

Oscar Wilde said that "consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative." I suspect the opposite is true: those of us who strip our lives of variety, who cling stubbornly to "the way we've always done it," and who fear change (no matter what good it promises) are those who actually *create* and *nourish* headspace for real workings of imagination that are much more fantastical than deciding on which flavour of ice cream to choose at Cold Stone Creamery.

All hail the Mighty Mundane!