The Illusion of Control

We curate everything today: our news, entertainment and media choices, dates, ride sharing, and even our coffee.

At Starbucks, I watch people curate their coffee. A customer orders a “venti iced skinny vanilla latte with sugar-free syrup, extra shot, light ice, with oat milk.” Behind them, five more people wait with equally complex orders. Coffee temperature, foam density, cup type—everything customized to perfection.

Our grandfathers drank coffee, too, but, they’d be appalled listening to today’s generation order a simple cup of coffee. Their generation drank two kinds of coffee: free and black.

We even custom-curate our music through playlists. We no longer have to listen to anything we don’t like. Just imagine forcing a group of today’s teens to use the original Walkman radio for one week. The horror!

The Paradox of Choice

I know people like things to be curated to their tastes. Me too. But, with all this curation, shouldn’t this should be the golden age of agency? Agency is when people make their own free choices. But agency is not autonomy.

Agency is simply the illusion of choice—the illusion of control. 

I wonder, though, does all this curation result in a greater sense of peace, or does it create a false sense of control where none really exists?

The Paradox of Choice

Barry Schwartz, a professor at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, is the author of The Paradox of Choice. “With so many options to choose from, people find it difficult to choose at all,” writes Schwartz. And even when we do choose, we’re often haunted by the shadow of the options we didn’t choose—the choices we didn’t make, the alternate lives we didn’t lead.

He continues, “the more options there are, the easier it is to regret the option that you chose.” You chose not to move to New York after college or go back to Law school or have more children.You regret the decision later and you grieve what didn’t happen. The life you didn’t lead.

Unreasonable Expectations

I wonder if all this customization is setting up the next generation for a lifetime of disappointment. See, real life isn’t curated at all. It’s mostly comprised of unscripted, uncurated moments. The most important choices in life aren’t really choices at all—they’re entirely random.

Nobody chooses their parents. We don’t get to pick our genes, either, or the sundry of flaws our parents pass on to us.

No one really curates their marriage. We might attempt to choose a mate, but nobody can predict the ways in which people and relationships develop or devolve over time. The people that leave a marriage by way of divorce or death are often very different than the people who entered the marriage.

Nobody curates a child. No matter how bad you want two girls and a boy, you’re just as likely to get three boys.

And, often to our chagrin, our children resist our efforts to over-program them into, well, us. Trying to customize a child into something we desire rarely works out well for anyone, especially the child.

Nobody really curates a career. You might choose a job to pursue, but nobody can predict twists and turns that a career will take. And, a great deal of what happens is simply a function of good or bad luck.

These uncurated life events and experiences shape us in ways that we can’t fathom, ways that carefully curated events can’t. The only real choice we have is how we react to life’s random twists and turns.

Outmaneuvering Discomfort

We spend our lives trying to avoid painful moments—attempting to outmaneuver discomfort. However, discomfort is random. Many will tell you that discomfort is where the soul grows. It’s where wisdom develops.

Wisdom emerges from our losses, our failures, and our mistakes. These random and painful lessons force us to confront reality and develop a greater appreciation for life.

• The person who’s been through heartbreak understands love differently.

• The parent who’s lost a child grasps the fragility of life.

• The person who survived cancer appreciates their health more.

It’s in these moments that we realize we don’t curate anything.

Ironically, true agency often comes from limits—from making peace with the cards you’ve been dealt. It comes from surrendering the illusion of control and still choosing to live with faith and courage. Or, as Schwartz wrote, “We would be better off if we embraced certain voluntary constraints on our freedom of choice instead of rebelling against them.”

What if it’s about surrender?

So, here’s the question: what if you stopped trying to curate the perfect life and just started living a real one?

A life where you don’t expect everything to be customized to perfection. A life where you really don’t have any idea how it’s all going to turn out.

A life where sometimes the worst moments become the most sacred. One where your passion interrupts you and grief breaks you open in ways that lead to something deeper, more profound.

We’re not here to custom-curate our lives. We’re here to be transformed. And transformation rarely comes from control. It comes from letting go and just ordering a black coffee.

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