A couple of years ago I was at a mall with a friend and I saw a shirt I liked; it was blue.  I looked at the size, the pattern, and the style and I decided I liked it.  My friend who had been looking around came up to the counter before I was about to pay and said: “Hey why are you buying the same shirt?”  I looked down at the shirt I was wearing, and then at the shirt I was about to buy, and they were the same — at least in colour and pattern (the shirt I was buying had French cuffs).  My response was completely rational: “I like this colour, that’s why I’m buying the shirt.  When I find something I like I stick with it.”  The sales girl listening in on our conversation then asked: “Don’t you ever get bored?”  I also had a rational answer for that too: “Maybe, but when I do, I’ll find another colour of shirt that I like and stick with that.”  And what’s funny about this story is that it was a perfect metaphor for my philosophy at the time.

I also have another shirt my friend gave me; it’s orange and white with stripes.  Funny thing is, I like it better than my (two) blue shirts even though I would never have bought it myself.  But what was wrong with my logic?  I liked blue shirts.  So I bought blue shirts even though I already had one.  Why should that stop me from buying another?

The answer is that I might not find an orange and white striped shirt or even known that I liked orange and white striped shirts.   Looking back it seems a bit silly, but sometimes a frog doesn’t realize he’s in a well until somebody asks him about his shirt.