I hate triscuts.

i have never been a picky eater. if you were to ask me what food item i would never put past my lips, there is really only one thing that comes to mind: triscuit crackers. and i only really possess this certain aversion due to an unfortunate food poisoning spell i feel into a couple of years ago, triscuits being the last thing i ate before i started to feel sick. this aversion has lead me to think about my taste, in other aspects of life, beyond the realm of food. 

first off, let’s establish a working definition for taste. at its core, i think of taste as our ability to discern what we like, from what we don’t like. 

over the years, i’ve discovered that i love lakes and beaches and large bodies of water, i love funny thought-out clever pranks, i love my family and my friends, i love talking to strangers like i’ve known them my whole life, i love finding an author with unique, clever prose, i love laughing, i love the feeling of being smitten by someone. 

i hate triscuts.

to me, there is only one way to develop taste, which is to live my life in a way that exposes me to different situations, people, and ideas. it’s been interesting to balance both a craving for a certain amount of stability in life, but also having a distaste for overly monotonous routines.

as i’m collecting new experiences and knowledge, i take the time to reflect. i try question why certain situations or people bring me joy while others drain my energy and make me feel miserable, and search for the common denominators. 

paying attention is a precursor to the ability to be able to ponder these reflections in the first place. so, as i go about my week, i try to slow down a bit and to be more present. the most tangible example of this is that i’ve stopped bringing my phone/laptop to dinner, which is something i used to do in order to get work done while i eat. now, i instead just sit and savor and experience all the layers and intricacies of the meal in front of me. this small change in my daily routine perhaps? has made me slightly less efficient as a human being (not that meal studying is that effective in the first place) but that’s totally ok since my purpose here as a human being is not to simply churn out complete tasks.

developing taste is important to me also because it helps me answer the oh-so important question of what do i want to do with my life? what is important to me? having good taste also has been important in informing the types of people i want to surround myself with. through interacting with a different types of people, i know that i am most drawn to those who have a certain set of traits– strong integrity, a curiosity about the world, optimism for the future, a little bit of nautiginess, and deep compassion for others. 

there is also a feeling of developing taste as a programmer. over time, i’ve started to think about how to write more elegant, more simple code. the compiler doesn’t care if i follow naming conventions, but my fellow programmers will. and because writing code is less about communicating with a computer and more about communicating with other programmers (& myself) who will inevitably have to read my code down the line, it is of utmost importance that i strive to continually develop my taste.

as human beings, it's quite easy to become a sponge of other people’s opinions and values. this is fine, because unless you are born and die in a sensory deprivation tank, you do not exist in a vacuum and then by definition are being influenced by other people around you. however, i think it’s worthwhile to take a moment to exercise and strengthen the muscle of being able to pause, question an assumption, dissect it, and cross reference it against my your understanding of the world before blindly adopting that assumption into your value system. every day is an invitation to continue refining your taste.