I saw a movie in a theatre for the first time in years recently. It was The Joker, the controversial nihilistic interpretation of the Batman villain’s descent into evil. Critics (left and right) have blamed The Joker for motivating incels, glamorizing mental illness and encouraging violence. It was quite glum. Certainly, not a “feel good” film. It’s such a contrast to a Soviet-era flick I recently saw called Не может быть! (Russian for It Can’t Be!), a heart-warming comedy about the follies of love and marriage. The Russian film was released in 1975, still within the grips of Soviet censorship and repression. And yet, despite the darkness of communism, the film has a lightness to it that made it more enjoyable than The Joker. By many measures, modern life is better, and yet our films are so grim. Is this an issue of censorship, the rise of nihilism or something else?

I was in Portugal this month for vacation for just a week — not enough to immerse myself in Portuguese customs, but more than a dip. One of my favorite ways to learn about a culture is to tour a grocery store. Wasn’t it Descartes who said “I eat, therefore I am”? And I can learn what someone eats from what they buy. Portuguese grocery stores have the usual European delicious excess of deli meats, cheeses, freshly baked goods. There are also a few oddities. First, the bacalhau section — an area with huge slabs of salted cod, unsurprising given the importance of cod to the Portuguese diet. Second, a large selection of chocolates and powdered drinking chocolates, also unsurprising since hot chocolate is typically enjoyed as a daily breakfast drink. Finally, “pick a number”-style line-ups for any deli, bakery or even fruit selection, suggesting these are a people who are either fed up with disorder, or maybe enjoy a bit of English-style queuing. Between salt cod, chocolate and queuing, I’ll take a few Milka bars to-go.

So this is how it begins — not with a bang, but with a WordPress blog. Yes, I have ambitious plans for my writing. With a toddler son slowly gaining independence, I find my free time correspondingly growing. My challenge is focus — the villain is choice. There is a famous American psychologist who coined the phrase “Paradox of Choice” to explain how sometimes too many options causes a traffic jam in our brains. For example, customers are more likely to buy a jar of jam if they are only presented with 6 flavors, instead of 24 or 30 choices. Now, what was I writing about? Oh, right, focus. I want a blog with a theme. It’s easier to write the fewer choices about topics there are.