Spolied for Choice

From Rabbi Pete Tobias, of the Liberal Synagogue ElstreeTuesday 25 November 2008

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The comedian Michael McIntyre makes an interesting observation about buffets.

When you order a meal in a restaurant, you just order one thing. But when you’re confronted with a buffet, you want everything – even things you’ve never thought of eating! And even though the buffet’s always replenished, you’re terrified it’ll all be gone before you’ve had a chance to eat it all.

I’m not sure all this choice is good for us. Remember when you went to get bread and milk from the local shop – you got a loaf of bread and a bottle of milk. Now it could be skimmed, semi-skimmed or full fat – and as for the bread... All those different types and shapes and sizes - if the buffet mentality took hold of you, you’d be eating nothing but bread for weeks.

There’s a lot of truth in the well-worn phrase ‘spoiled for choice.’ We’re spoiled in the sense that all our needs are indulged. But I think we’re also spoiled in the sense of being ruined: we seem to have lost a sense of how to value and appreciate things, because there are just so many of them.

It’s not easy to take a step back from our materialistic world when it perpetually encourages us to consume more and more. We imagine the whole world is a buffet from which we humans can take whatever we want.

But perhaps we should every now and then, try to learn some humility and understand our place in the world.