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Do you Know What You Like?

posted 13th October 2009    Written by: Kendra    CATEGORY: All Posts, Kendra, Life Lesson, Quarterlife Crisis, Season 1

wineThe other day I did something that mostly the unemployed are in a position to do.

I grabbed a bottle of wine and headed to a friend’s house in the middle of Wednesday afternoon. My friend and I were having an unemployed play date; an afternoon spent chatting, chilling and, yes, watching Oprah.

It was glorious.

Over the course of talking about this and that, it came up that somewhere in the past two years I had somehow lost the sense of knowing what I liked.

Case in point? A couple of weeks ago I met up with a friend for dinner and drinks and I spent a good portion of the night faking (and failing miserably) to have a good time. While the dinner portion was fantastic (particularly when we stumbled across the lovely Van Leeuwen ice cream truck and their truly resplendent ginger ice cream) the bar scene left me cold.

Somewhere over the past two years the stereotypical NYC bar scene where people go more to be seen than to interact, where drinks are dizzyingly expensive and music is pumped so loud as to render conversation nearly impossible, had transitioned from something I somewhat enjoyed to something I hated. I’d rather be at a dive bar gathered with a bunch of friends, or at a club dancing with a bunch of friends, or sequestered on a couch with a blanket, a remote control and some quality TV… I’d even take some not so quality TV.

It was kind of bizarre to find out that I no longer totally knew what I liked until my friend astutely pointed out that the things that I liked when I was 6 are not the things that I like now (sorry Gumby).

Even more recently, I hated red wine until I moved to France in 2005 and now I absolutely adore the stuff, and I was vehement in my opinion that beer tastes like urine until I moved to Vermont in 2007. Now I think nothing goes better with a plate of fries than a nice stout or perhaps a red ale. In fact, the way the brain responds to taste bud information changes every 5 to 7 years meaning there’s a whole world of foods I used to hate that I may now love, if only I’m willing to take the chance.

Our tastes and preferences change but we tend to treat ourselves as fixed objects which can leave us spinning in circles stuck in activities, routines, jobs, relationships, or even patterns of thought that used to give us pleasure, but really, no longer do. We can also find ourselves avoiding things (like stability) because we used to find it stifling. The trick, I think to staying happy is to listen to our feelings.

Does this continue to bring us pleasure, or have things shifted?

Are we doing this out of obligation or a sense of self that no longer fits?

Some preferences, I suspect, will never change. I will probably never develop a deep abiding love for condiments, cream sauces, or touch screen phones and I think I’ll always love traveling even if I get sick of economy class flights, backpacker hostels or the comfort of friend’s couches.

But for other things, the picture may have shifted and the beauty of unemployment is I’m in a position to figure out how much…   It’s a big world out there and I’m ready to figure out (again) what I like…  even if it means trying something old.

Photo credit: digimist

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