All of these myriad choices may not actually be giving you more freedom to select one you like.
How many boxes of cereal does a thinking society really need? Just standing in front of a row of cereal boxes in an ordinary grocery store is to face a wall of information that would have paralyzed a 15th century serf.
Supply side economists would argue that the question is misplaced, that the total number of cereal choices gets determined by the immutable laws of supply and demand, that the marketplace is always right, and that motley choices are the sign of success. I think that’s all missing the point (which is probably why I’m not an economist.)
Free spirits do not always seek more choices. There’s something of a burden inherent in a million choices. Many free spirits will be perfectly content to eat the same plain yogurt and strawberries for breakfast most every day for the rest of their lives. Being a free spirit is about something beyond having endless choices, or simply doing whatever, whenever.
The whole concept of being “free” (of spirit) suggests that a person is not overly stressed by things that others might regard as limiting. Being a free spirit does not imply that a person wants to abandon berries in favor of something more daring for breakfast. Being free means that endless choices are not in themselves the thing to pursue in the first place.
On the surface a free spirit suggests an artistic proclivity, an ability not to get bogged down in the kind of trivia that could curtail freedom of intellectual and sensual expression in people less free of spirit. I think this is true to a point, but all of that freedom also presents a challenge.
Free spirits may be unencumbered and thus uninhibited, but without some conscious effort, that can be a fast track to being undisciplined, too. The limitations imposed by internal inhibitions are the mechanical linkages that facilitate decisiveness and clarity. Free spirits may feel the flexibility to feel and respond to the world with an enviable ease, but all of that potential malleability sometimes comes at the cost of focus, and there is never anything substantially creative that comes without a measure of intense focus. Let me put it in terms more purple: a constant exchange of lovers often leads to emotional ennui. Intimacies among many undermines the potential for deeper intimacies among a few.
Creative enterprises thrive on freedom, but too much freedom—an endless quantity of choices, opportunities, or time—does not make for better work. That said, free spirits are rare, and their innate ability to live without encumbrances entrances and entices. It’s their openness to the world that makes us look on longingly. Every creative person I know wishes wishes he or she could be untroubled, free to feel and free to act. Acts of creation are, after all, about action. In the nexus between infinite freedom and resolute limitations lie the potential for living a life that matters.