Avoiding risk and surprise means going somewhere without going anywhere

Evidence

Of course, having encounters entails risks that not everyone is willing to take. For example, I once dated someone whose very intelligent brother only ate at chain restaurants when he traveled, his reasoning being that he wanted to know what he was getting and that he didn’t want to waste time risking something he wouldn’t like. This used to infuriate my then-boyfriend whenever he visited, since we lived in a part of San Francisco famous for its Mexican, Salvadorian, and Ecuadorian food. The idea of eating at Chipotle instead of La Palma Mexicatessen or Los Panchos, especially when you were only going to be in San Francisco for a few days, seemed absurd. Food-wise, this man had achieved the strange feat of going somewhere without actually going anywhere. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 475

Categorization

• CANDY: The Chipotle-while-in-San-Francisco anecdote is a light, instantly relatable opener for conversation.
• XREF: connects to: Rushing homeward is driven by the destination rather than the route; Risk-averse preference for the known can make travel pointless — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the…, 475; Flight from one’s situation is itself an assumption of that situation — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1241 (+1 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Rushing homeward is driven by the destination rather than the route; Risk-averse preference for the known can make travel pointless — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the…, 475; Flight from one’s situation is itself an assumption of that situation — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1241 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Flight from one’s situation is itself an assumption of that situation #complicates (0.74) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1241