ABSTRACT
These essays concern the apparent simplification of living with fewer choices – a situation that, in fact, turns out to be just another complication. How do we navigate a world in which so much appears to be closed off or, worse yet, permanently closed down? How can we cope with a new kind of isolation – not indoors, precisely, but still cut off from the exploding capitalist phantasmagoria of pre-pandemic America? The only reasonable approach, which my patients come around to, is to adjust their estimate of what actually matters. They move further towards the connections that they have; they cultivate newer, more satisfying connections; they become more introspective to compensate for the loss of easy outlets to fun and distraction. In this sense, they become more like people used to be, say, at a time when access to fun and distraction was not so easy. Part IV is about the complications of living a simpler, more focused life, after we have lived so long with a plethora of choices. Commitment entails a heightened sense of consequentiality. This worries my patients; we discuss it.
