Just a little taste

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Hey, Creator.

Over the last couple weeks, I’ve been unfolding a two-hour conversation with Kelton, my podcast producer and de facto cohost. Together, we’ve been exploring the question of taste. Is your palate as a person the same as your taste as an artist? Is there such a thing as universally good or bad taste? How does one develop what they prefer and learn to trust it? I want to argue that all of it comes down to trusting yourself.

​Listen to Part 1 here.

​Listen to Part 2 here.

Your taste is your style; it’s what you know and like, and it's what makes your approach to your craft, well, yours. Learning this, developing it, and coming to trust it is essential for your evolution as a creator. If you are playing for the masses, you are never going to earn the respect of the one audience member you cannot live without: yourself.

At least, that’s what I think. You may be different. And that would be your taste, which would be wonderful. When it comes to understanding our own style of creative expression and what kind of art, food, and media we prefer to consume, we take one more step in the direction of choosing ourselves.

There’s a lot of bad information out there about being selfless, which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me—etymologically or otherwise. How could you ever be self-less? How could you ever be less than a self, and why would you want to be? I wonder why we consider it a virtue for a person to leave themselves behind for the sake of others. Why is that necessarily a good or even virtuous thing to do? It seems noble, on some level, to sacrifice yourself and your desires for the sake of others; but why? And is it always necessary to give up what you love for someone else’s preference? That seems to be simply trading positions. I wonder if we can do better.

Is it possible, as the creators of our lives, to first become ourselves and then choose to pursue what we love? And can we do this in a way that others aren’t necessarily deprived of what they love? It seems ideal for as many people as possible to get what they want, doesn't it?

Beyond selflessness, I think we should be able to enjoy the things that we enjoy without constraint. And I find it so funny that this seems far-fetched. Why not give it a try? Why jump immediately to all the resistance and exceptions that may make such an ideal distasteful? Consider this, and consider it also a challenge if you'd like: it just might be possible for you to get what you love, and for that not be a bad thing.

The trick, then, is to know what you want. What is your taste? What would you love? Have you even been brave enough to admit it to yourself? Maybe it conflicts with what “everyone else” says is right or good or true. Maybe they’re wrong. Maybe they don’t know what they’re talking about. Maybe you’re right. Or maybe those are just preferences, and one is no better or worse than the other.

I can’t say for sure, but there’s only one way to find out.

An artist’s taste is everything to their aesthetic. But this takes time and effort to develop. And often, we won’t know what we like until we experience what we don’t like. This is natural and good, and the only way we come to such determinations is through robust experimentation.

Maybe, then, this act of figuring out your style is more about paying attention than it is about preconceived preferences. Developing your taste is a process of trusting yourself and your experiences. It’s about learning to live in the moment and knowing that, sometimes, it never gets better than the first sip. And really, what we’re talking about here is the art of learning to live a little more fully.

Isn’t that what’s it all about, anyway?

Here’s to trying,

Jeff

P.S. Check out this week's Overcoming Odds podcast, where my friend Oleg Lougheed and I talk about why and how we make the decisions we do and how that affects the story of our life.

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