As a kid, I didn’t respond well to the expectation to have favorites — a favorite color, favorite dish, favorite holiday, favorite thing. In a word, I thought it was dumb, and of all the things I found difficult to deal with growing up, dumb expectations were among the worst. But it was an almost universal expectation — or at least it was in my memory, clouded as it may be by my own reaction to things I considered dumb.

I was also a nascent philosopher, though no one, including me, would have put it like that. For instance, my seventh grade language arts teacher assigned us an essay on “My Favorite Things,” which I understood as an invitation to ridicule the entire system of favorites.

What is the point, I started, with having favorites? Consider your favorite food: Now consider how you’d feel about that favorite food if you ate it, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, for six weeks? You might get sick and die, I pointed out, or worse, you might wish you had, perhaps as early as week two.

And think of the inconsistencies involved. Suppose I wore my favorite shirt six weeks straight? My mom, who was always eager to tell me and others what my own favorites were — no doubt due to my own recalcitrance — used to think it catastrophic if she saw me in the same t-shirt for three days. So how does having a favorite translate into practical behavior without being declared an obsession? Or poor hygiene?

I ended my seventh-grade rumination with what I thought was the coup de grace: I pointed out that just about everyone’s favorite thing is something that person thinks they can’t get enough of. From which it follows, I argued, that if we did get enough of whatever we’ve declared our favorite thing, it wouldn’t be our favorite thing any more, so the whole favorite project would self-destruct. So, I concluded, the entire point of having a favorite is to be frustrated at not getting enough of it, and to that I say, No thanks.

As it happened, my teacher, Mrs. L, had a more developed sense of sarcasm than I was used to among teachers, so she chalked my ridicule up to wit. I got a good grade, but I paid for it by listening to a lecture about following instructions. As usual.

Now, some of you will find stories about my childhood more amusing than the adults who had to live through them with me; in fact, I hope you do. But there’s more going on here than just my life-long struggle with Oppositional-Defiant Disorder. Why do we invest so much in having favorites? And in talking about them?

Before we go any further, let me say that, if you have favorite things, more power to you. I’m not saying it’s a problem that needs a cure. But this is a blog mainly about reflecting on things, and so I’d like to explore the ways in which having favorites grows out of (and maybe reveals) something about our nature as rational animals.

I’ve observed before that Nature gave us this amazing brain, and, almost as if it occurred to her that our brains are expensive to run, Nature equipped us with a variety of deterrents from engaging the brain any more than necessary. One of those deterrents is our penchant for ritualizing behaviors — including, in this case, things we like. Think of it like this: Having a favorite flavor of ice cream spares you the anxiety — and the electrochemical expense — of deciding on a flavor when confronted with 31 choices.

What’s more, Nature has stacked the deck against choices. Consider this: Surgeons confronted with a choice between surgery or another less invasive option choose the latter much more often than surgeons confronted with surgery and two or more alternatives. We’re talking aggregate numbers here, not an individual surgeon who might be suffering from an attack of mental fatigue. In fact, the presence of more choices seems to reinforce having favorites: Think about how many of us mindlessly buy the same brand of soap month after month, out of the dozens of choices we confront. And if you’re brave, think about our state of mind when they don’t have our favorite brand on shopping day.

None of this means having favorites is dumb, in spite of that pronouncement by my seventh-grade self. But these reflections do give us some insight into our nature as rational animals. We are certainly capable of reason and deliberation, but we often relegate choices to ritualized patterns of thought and behavior, which we eulogize as preferences or habits or favorites. That’s not inherently good or bad: Think about how difficult (impossible?) playing a musical instrument would be if you have to remake every choice about which finger to put where every time.

On the other hand, the inverse of this lesson is that changing habits can be very challenging. It’s not just your habit you have to change; in a sense, it’s also your Nature. But as a rational animal, you have not only the capacity to adopt habits that reduce the energy sink that is your big brain; your big brain also confers on you the capacity to cultivate your habits intentionally.

It requires investment of our time and energy, but if we want, we can adopt excellencifying as our favorite.