The word TASTE is typically related to eatable food items, but many times it is also used in broader prospective to indicate individual liking/ disliking of a person.
The taste is always associated with smell because we have same types of receptors in our body for both senses of smell & taste. Our favorite dish or anything ‘to our taste’ means it should confirm to our favorite patterns or references in the mind. Our taste buds in the throat and sensing receptors in the nose should appreciate it by comparing to the previously experienced & stored patterns.
In broader prospective, any shape confirming to the visual reference patterns in our brain having good experiences is liked by us, be it an object or person. Same applies to the senses of hearing & touch also. We compare the interacted sounds or touches with the previously stored references and then label it good or bad.
When we remember any experience, we go back to past and relive those moments. We ‘act, behave, and feel’, like we did it at that time. We repeatedly activate our good experiences stored in the mind by remembering the past good events. At the same time, we tend to forget the bad experience to filter it out from our memory as far as possible. This is the gift nature has given us to accumulate & grow the combined sense of ‘well-being’ in our mind.
We constantly explore & build new experience patterns to our liking. But this is not always an individual selection. The society or environment around us has got a fair share of ‘decision making’ in this process.
To illustrate this effect with example, think of a native person newly migrated to city for better living conditions. Normally at some point of time, s(he) is exposed to a new drink called ‘coffee’. His/her initial reactions are not good as the drink tastes bitter. But due to peer pressure or the social tag attached to this drink or a fear of not being labeled as primitive / old fashioned, s(he) decides to enjoy and after repeated exposures, acquires a taste for the drink. Same happens with alcohol.
If we try to locate the origin of this process of taste building, the roots are found in our mother’s profile. Mother’s womb is the safest place we can think off. The food is automatically delivered to us without asking for it. We are moving around in the cage of protection filled with liquid. The images formed in the mind that time and the smell & taste of the liquid around us the first reference data for a good experience. When we leave this heavenly abode, we suddenly face harsh and unknown environment around us. Gradually, we learn to handle situations and manipulate the environment.
In our formative years, the body odor & touch of our mother is the best experience we store as reference. Perhaps with these initial references, we go for a lookout of a ‘dream partner’ throw-out our life. Only lucky ones find their ‘dream partner’ and others nags about their partners for not conforming to the initial experiences stored in the mind as reference.
For those unfortunate ones, who are deprived of this early association with their mothers, anyone providing protection & care takes the place of mother for building references in the mind.
Thus, our taste defines our personality dynamically and this process make each one of us a unique person in the universe.
Deepak Dixit is an engineering graduate from IIT, Roorkee, India (erstwhile University of Roorkee). He has served for more than 22 years in 'Indian Army' as an officer and has taken a pre mature retirement after that. He has also served in corporate world for about 5 years. Presently he is focusing on writing.
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