Appreciating Subtle Experiences

I’ve been coming to this cafe for more than a year now. Earlier, I used to order sugary beverages with chocolate chips or flavored syrups. They tasted good, I liked them. But when I quit sugar a year back, I was forced to shift to plain coffee. It was bitter but I kept drinking it week after week. Soon enough, I could appreciate its subtle flavor. Today, I’m in love with the simple Latte and cannot sip any sugary drink.

The thing with sugar is that it overshadows every other flavor. You think you’re tasting coffee but it’s mostly the taste of sugar. It’s the same with most processed foods — chocolates, cookies, corn flakes, you name it. You’re tasting sugar in different forms. Your tastebuds become less receptive and you are unable to notice the nuances of different flavors. That’s why I found the taste of coffee uncomfortable and refreshing.

There’s a term in the programming world called “syntactic sugar”. It refers to a piece of code that’s easy to integrate into your own code, but it hides all the complexity from you. So, even though you feel good about using that piece of code, the moment an error occurs, you’re doomed because you don’t understand the code itself.

These examples can be extrapolated to a number of other areas. Songs have catchy hooks but lack lyrical depth. It’s boring to read a book when we can scroll through social media and feel an instant high. Travel agencies plan the perfect trips for us but we come back without any stories.

Dopamine releasers are packaged in so many forms that it’s really easy to get a high these days. What’s not so easy is to sit through discomfort and understand the nuances of an experience. It’s hard to appreciate the subtleties because it’s boring.

Nobody has time to ponder over the details, to reflect over an experience, to document their learnings, to express their feelings. Most of us want TLDRs, want to skip to the good parts, want to narrate our adventures but not our epiphanies.

But if we are willing to go down that path, the subtle experiences are actually quite rewarding. Because what they lack in terms of instant happiness, they make up with sustained contentment.

I’m as guilty of chasing dopamine as anyone else. But I’m trying to change it by simplifying my food and content diet (it’s mostly reduction). Let’s see how it goes and what more I can change.

Any thoughts or feedback? Reply to this email or comment on the website.

Good night,
Aachman