Educating the palate

Photograph use by permission of Karen Walrond at Chookooloonks.com

Do me a favor, think back to the first time you experienced the superlative (as measures go) of something about whose quality until then, you'd never cared much about. For instance, you tasted a really good cup of coffee instead of that mud colored swill someone sold you as java or, you put on an item of clothing that was so well-made it fit you not only properly but comfortably. Though so far I've only mentioned two materially acquired things as examples, my question also applies to the immaterial acquisitions of life. How about the first time you listened to the kind of music that swept you away on an avalanche of emotion too impossible to describe? Or, how about the sensation you get when you go places you'd never thought you could get to, by following the road map someone has given you through their words on page?

You know, too often we tend to stagnate and we forget what it is to replenish the reservoirs we draw upon to survive our days, with the really . good . stuff.
I'm talking about the object, the understanding or the action we should stretch out to because, we've already covered the ground behind us and something new and foreign is what we really need to be moving towards. That experience is out there, waiting for us to chuck out our tried knowns, our comfortable truths.

Why we forget to explore in these new directions can be explained by one or both of the following: 1. You don't realize you haven't changed for a while
2. You over-estimate the effort it would take for you to change something about yourself or how you live your day to day. Either scenario is understandable. We are creatures wedded to our routines. Established ways do make life easier by absolving us from the responsibility we have to explore. Unfortunately, they also impede inner wisdom, and disguise the
full stop we seem to have come to in the quest to further educate the palate of our existence. Why is it important that we not allow this to happen? In a nutshell, we have only the one life to live and it behooves us to improve its quality anyway we can.

How do we change course? We do that not only by making those major decisions we sometimes initiate ourselves though more often than not we are forced into, but also by acting upon the smaller epiphanies we regularly ignore. It can start with a good cup of coffee, some music that transports you, a phenomenal book you've read. You do not need to leave your home or everything you know to change yourself for the better. All you need do, is to not forget how curiosity propels us forward. How deserving we are of our self-betterment. We've got only this one life and days pass us by with nothing learned in them. Are you going to let it continue this way?