Acquiring taste

To have experienced an acute sadness before, for that particular note and the arrangement of chords to evoke an emotion from deep down the chambers of the heart and the mind.

To be able to taste that exotic or not so exotic culinary concoction, and be able to discern the different notes, and to trace the geographical parameters of nature and the creative human infusions that went into making it.

To be on the lookout for beauty in the quest to unlocking more; more in the emotional processing centres of the brain, of love, of betrayal, of sorrow, of the pain of the unrequited; stoking emotions not felt before.

To be able to feel the rhythm and lose oneself to movement; either to beats and tunes, in order to dance; or to the instructions while punching a heavy bag; and to feel as if in a vignette with nothing else in perspective - only after having survived the difficulty of catching breaths and panting through the process of acquiring the muscle memory.

To be able to perceive in others, even if not lived experiences, and to be connected enough to others, to be able to live their experiences - happy, joyous and sad.

To be able to feel through visual storytelling of others, and to feel inspired by a certain song, and feel transported to an alternate universe; that sitting on a swing, unaffected by pesky mosquitoes buzzing around, tapping feet and shaking fingers to the beautiful tune in the gentlest of drizzles, and typing out poetry prose on the phone’s text editor, is such an unexplained joy of being in the flow - absolutely enjoying the experience, unaware of the numerous people moving around as gleaned in the peripheral vision.

To be able to feel acutely, the pain inherent in the journey and the joy of standing up for beliefs, portrayed in a novel featuring idealistic people, only after having lived through relatable experiences oneself or through others.

Art is born as we move to uncover new emotions, and only when enough time has passed does someone feel surprise or the pangs of nostalgia, as Nicole Krauss says.

Thomas Nagel famously said how you can never know what it feels to be somebody else, when he wrote “What is it like to be a bat?”. When references and metaphors are added to the prose, either it narrows the set of people who can relate to the writing, or attracts people who want to know, in the pursuit of more.

To be able to pursue, and learn, and critique, and tune the skills of appreciation, and enable that parallel stream of feed for the soul, that the taste unlocked so far, can maintain its continuity through humanity’s.

To be able to push the levels of personal optimal hedonic value gradually, as more and more appreciation of aesthetes is uncovered, and to genuinely find pleasure without the pressure of relative status games, while escaping the momentum of mimetic desires that put one of the path to seeking out, in the first place.

To contemplate the utilitarian values of happiness and improving the net happiness of those around, by constant honing of judgement, to discover and surface hidden talents and the distribution of possible pleasures to more..