DE Weekly: The Hurt Locker, Cereal, & the Burden of Choice
Below is an archived email originally sent on March 9, 2026.
The Hurt Locker, Cereal, & the Burden of Choice
Jean-Paul Sartre made famous the Existentialist idea that, as humans, we are “condemned to be free.” By this, he meant that we did not choose to be alive, but once alive, we are responsible for the choices we make. Even not choosing to choose is a choice.
This level of absolute personal responsibility––what Sartre called our radical freedom––often leads us to anguish and dread. The overwhelming weight of being the one responsible for your choices is terrifying, on some level; in the end, we are the one true author of our life.
Thus, nobody is truly responsible for your actions and for who you become but you. Since, as Sartre suggested, there is no predefined “human nature,” the nature you choose to take on is up to you.
It all comes down to choices. The choices you do make, the choices you don’t make, the choices you make instead of others. This has been referred to as the “burden of choice.”
Also called the “paradox of choice,” this is when we suffer a form of anxiety known as “analysis paralysis.”
Presented with a seemingly infinite number of choices each and every day, how do we know we’re making the right ones? Enough wrong choices and you might doubt yourself. You might abandon the personal responsibility of decision making altogether.
As I’m writing this, I am reminded of a scene from the 2008 film The Hurt Locker, an American war film following a bomb disposal team in Iraq.
When one of the characters (played by Jeremy Renner) returns home, he’s out grocery shopping with his wife and child. His wife asks him to go grab some cereal.
We then see him scanning the wall of hundreds of boxes of cereal: dozens of brands, variations, and flavors. He stares confusedly at the mountain of boxes and, after a sigh, just grabs one and throws it in the cart.
In watching this scene, you might ask yourself, “Why did an American soldier who spent time in Iraq fighting a war, flirting with death at every turn, get overwhelmed by choosing a breakfast cereal?”
In what is an excellent piece of filmmaking, I believe the answer is this: it is difficult for someone who spent so long living in simplified chaos to return to chaotic simplicity.
One day, the most important decision you have to make is to decide which wire to cut to defuse a bomb. If you get it wrong, lives are lost.
The next day, the most important decision you have to make is which cereal to purchase. Seemingly, there are no real stakes. No one will die if you buy Honey Nut Cheerios instead of regular Cheerios. (Unless you have a deadly honey allergy.)
Even so, I believe it reminds us of two important things as it relates to the burden of choice we all bear in life:
First, we are absolutely, radically free to choose whatever we like. We have the immense responsibility of shaping our own lives, our own being, with each and every choice.
Second, no matter how mundane, how pointless, how meaningless a choice might seem, it behooves us to take it seriously. Seriously.
Is choosing one cereal over another at the grocery store going to radically change the outcome of your life? It’s not likely, no.
But if we cannot take such a choice seriously, how are we to confront the bigger things in life, the ones that truly matter?
Existentialism is not just an abstraction in this way. It is a philosophy of practice.
It is incumbent upon us to avoid what Sartre called living in Mauvaise Foi, in Bad Faith. If we allow ourselves to be overwhelmed by choosing a box of cereal, we might end up convincing ourselves that none of it really matters, that all of life is pointless.
To escape this anxiety, we must accept that we are free, that we are responsible for our choices. Approach every choice with rigor, therefore––accept that you are the one who gets to make the choice.
Embrace authenticity. This is what Sartre wrote is the antidote to bad faith: authenticity. Authenticity means accepting the burden of your freedom of choice and owning up to your decisions to create a life that you value.
In so doing, you take full ownership of your life. Is this not what we’re all after after all?
Albert Camus philosophized that what we are all after, on some level, is a sense of meaning.
Some choices might seem arbitrary. If no one choice put before you is “true,” or “correct,” how will choosing anything make a real difference? How will not choosing anything make a real difference?
Camus would tell you that the answer to this indifference is rebellion.
Rebellion against the indifference of the world, rebellion against the sense of meaninglessness, rebellion against the pit of despair.
So, in a world of indifference that seemingly doesn’t care what cereal we eat, why don’t we make it matter what cereal we eat?
“Should I kill myself or have a cup of coffee?” we ask ourselves. If nothing mattered, the answer would be either/or.
But it does matter. Life matters. So, the answer is to have a cup of coffee. You must live, and to live means to embrace the freedom you have, the freedom of choice. It will all matter if you choose to live authentically.
“Man can will nothing unless he has first understood that he must count on no one but himself; that he is alone, abandoned on earth in the midst of his infinite responsibilities, without help, with no other aim than the one he sets himself, with no other destiny than the one he forges for himself on this earth.” –– Jean-Paul Sartre
Thanks for reading.
Sincerely,
Brandon J. Seltenrich
P.S.––
Don’t be afraid to make choices. Only you can.
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