Life is a Buffet, Not Fine Dining
By: Brian Wright
Tags: Life Lessons, Abundance, Choices, Happiness, Life

Life is a Buffet, Not Fine Dining

Image by Engin Akyurt from Pixabay

If you’ve ever been to Las Vegas then you’ve undoubtedly heard or even experienced one of the lavish, and sometimes not so lavish, hotel buffets. Ask most people whether they enjoy buffet dining and it’s like asking whether they voted for Trump or Biden — people land squarely on one side or the other, with a few people who secretly enjoy them but won’t admit.

Too many adults expect life to be fine dining

I’ve never met a kid who didn’t like the buffet, yet as adults we question the quality of any restaurant that cooks fish and fish sticks in the same kitchen. It seems as we grow older and our palate becomes more refined, so do our expectations on happiness. But the secret to happiness in life (and the buffet) is understanding the gift of choice and the blessing of having so many options to choose. Too many adults expect life to be fine dining, where everything should be good. Life is really more akin to eating at the buffet. When you make this switch, it becomes a lot easier to find happiness.

If my wife and I go to a high-end steakhouse for our anniversary, we expect the bill to be way north of one hundred dollars. But for that price, we expect everything to be top-notch. From the timeliness of seating based on our reservation, to the amount of pink in our medium filets, we expect everything to be near perfect for that dinner. When it’s not, at worst it’s a disappointing meal and possibly never going back. At best, it exceeds our expectations. In going to that restaurant we are entering into an unwritten contract that says, “we’ll pay the restaurant a good sum of money to have a really good dining experience.”

All throughout life we make similar unwritten contracts in hopes of finding success and happiness in our professional and personal endeavors. We find a good college with the expectation that we’ll find a good job when we graduate. We change our looks and our clothes in expectation of being more attractive to people we might want to date. We overspend on our cars and other material possessions, thinking a higher price means higher quality, or mistakenly — less maintenance. The reality is that life keeps no record of unwritten contracts, yet we put a lot of weight into these unwritten agreements, often disappointed when things don’t meet our wishes.

How to Find Happiness

But life truly mimics a buffet. From the time you enter the door there are no reservations; you could wait fifteen minutes or fifty to be seated — it may take you three years or thirty to find true happiness. At the buffet, you pay for your meal before you even know what is exactly on the menu. By entering the door, you are not expecting fine dining; you hope there will be a few entrees you like — some you may even love. That’s the secret to enjoying the buffet and finding happiness in life.

In the search to be happy it often means finding yourself in many unhappy situations. It’s a process of learning to try new things just like the buffet; some things may look appealing at first glance and really be horrible, other things may look totally unappealing and be absolutely great once you try it.

Sunk Costs

A sunk cost is one that cannot be refunded or recovered easily for most practical purposes.

When you pay your money to the hostess at the buffet that cost is sunk — you can try and get a refund before you touch any food, but it makes more sense to go with your original plan and just try as many things as possible. You’re already there, so why not try everything? Not enough people appreciate the gift of choice. Being in a position to try so many things and go back for seconds (or even thirds) is a blessing, yet it’s so easy to complain about how this dish or that dessert wasn’t good.

Sunk costs can be big or small, last a day or years, but we experience these costs often without knowing. Ever go to an amusement park and your favorite ride is closed? You’ve already paid admission, so the best thing to do is find your next favorite ride. Ever go on vacation with a group of people, and one person complains the whole time about one particular experience? That’s fixating on sunk costs. The buffet approach would be to focus on other parts of the vacation so as not to ruin the whole trip.

start early, try things often, and have no regrets

Going to college and graduating is a huge sunk cost. You won’t really know if you like your chosen field until you wake up every morning do it day in and day out. This can be a tough dish to swallow if your chosen field doesn’t translate well into other career options. But you’d be very surprised how well most people can pivot when they have no choice. The key is to start early, try things often, and have no regrets. Most of the time we make the best decision, based on the circumstances and knowledge we had at the time. Trust me when I say, being an engineering student at a university with super-creative people is quite different than doing engineering at a firm for the rest of your life. Try not to second guess the buffet; first try finding another dish.

All You Can Eat

If you have ever watched people at the buffet, you can always tell if it’s their first, second, or even third trip up to the food station. When diners start, they pile everything on to their plates to just sample the food. By the second time, people have refined what they really want. Whatever is on their plate for the third trip you can assume is their favorite items of the night. If you see someone only with a few items on their plate the first time, they have either been to this buffet before or they are that kid that just eats fish sticks.

Now if you go to the buffet thinking every dish will be exquisite (including those fish sticks) then you’re setting yourself up for disappointment. If you tried the lasagna the last time and didn’t like it, odds are it won’t taste any different the next time you go. If the new boyfriend or girlfriend acts too much like the old one, you may need to evaluate your taste in partners.

In the buffet and in life, don’t spend so much time weighing the options. Try as much as possible then leave behind what you really don’t fancy. The sooner you do this, the younger you do this, the more time you have enjoying what you really like.

Some people are very lucky and just know they want to be a surgeon at 15-years-old. They take every chemistry and biology course their high school can offer. These young adults find what they like at the buffet early, maybe without even trying everything else, but it’s a deep enough passion where they can feast on their life choice and be happy forever.

For us regular folk, we’ll need to go through quite a few dishes and possibly, quite a few different buffets to find what really suits our palate.

It’s Not the Kitchen, It’s the Chef

Buffets ARE truly a cost game — restaurants must charge one price that can cover the cost of what a typical adult would eat in one sitting. So, yes, you probably won’t find the finest Wagyu Beef at the ol’ country buffet, but you might find a prime rib that definitely warrants seconds from the carving station. Good chefs can make the finest meals with the most basic ingredients. Give me a $50,000 commercial kitchen in my home, and I’ll still be a mediocre cook at best.

If you’ve eaten enough good food in your life, you know it’s not the kitchen, but the chef that makes the meal. Some of the best beef has been cooked at a Texas backyard barbeque. Somewhere in Louisiana a grandmother cooks gumbo in her kitchen better than any restaurant in downtown New Orleans. In Boston, a father does a lobster that could embarrass most seafood restaurants in New England.

The point is that you can never discount a dish or a life experience based on the environment alone — or as the old saying goes, “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” So while it would be great if every dish in life was exactly what you see, the reality is that you should expect surprises (good and bad), and frankly learn from them.

You Don’t Have to Clean Your Plate

Lastly, eating at the buffet is probably the one time in life you are not expected to clean your plate. Restaurants know you will try lots of different foods and certain things you just won’t favor. Don’t feel you have to finish every experience you just don’t like. Know when it’s time to move on and try something else, or leave that buffet entirely. This doesn’t mean be wasteful and reckless. Remember, both abundance and choice are two special gifts that many people around the world do not have the privilege of receiving. But life is too long to be beholden to something simply because you don’t want to feel wasteful or the sunk cost is too high.

So enjoy the buffet and take it for what it is.

And if you have a favorite buffet in Las Vegas or any other city, let me know in the comments — I’m not too proud to try it. ;-)