Beware of those who don’t taste
“Adults have between 2,000 and 4,000 taste buds in total. The sensory cells in the taste buds are renewed once a week.”
National Library of Medicine article
I was watching a documentary at some point about the last remaining soy sauce maker who did it the original way. I can’t remember who it was, what the doc was called, or where I watched it, but I can see so clearly this small old Japanese man 10 feet in the air swirling a giant bamboo paddle in a huge wooden vat filled to the brim, and stained all over with the drippings of soy sauce in the fermentation process that takes something like a year to complete. The message was clear - craft has been dying at the feet of consumerism and impatience.
Imagine the taste of THAT soy sauce compared to the stuff we get on the shelf. Imagine the complexity - the rich saltiness, the endless tang that hits you right in the jowls, the effervescent fermented explosion across the 4,000 tastebuds in your mouth. Now, imagine how long it took to understand how to taste that complexity so this man could prepare the product right, let alone learning the best processes to actually brew it. He must have had at least a few years (again, the fermentation process takes a full year) of ruined batches because he got a portion of the ingredients juuuuuust off. How did that leave him? Nowadays, in some factory somewhere, ingredients are hustled together and timed out with algorithms to ensure the tightest margins for black on the ledger, and then those people go home and squirt ketchup on a steak (probably).
Do you want to taste that soy sauce? Do you want to understand HOW to taste that soy sauce?
I was talking with someone about beers once and he told me with a straight face, “I’d drink Coors Light for the rest of my life, no problem.” I still cringe. Here’s my problem: why are we so OK with mediocrity? Why are we so limp when it comes to craft? We just fawn at the feet of cheap and easy that our obsession with profits has forfeited any ability to develop deep and meaningful talents - we’re so taken by superheroes we’ve overlooked the wise old man that saves the city (eccl 9:!5).
We’re missing out, guys.
The man who doesn’t want to taste isn’t worried about the richest experience of beauty, he’s only interested in his bottom line. Now, I’m not saying this man is inherently evil, but I am saying that following this dude is going to always leave you thirsting for more. Unlike the salt of the earth, that man is like salt water - he’s going to leave you unsatisfied and completely dehydrated. Why? Because he hasn’t done the work to liven his appreciation for the depths at which we experience the creation, and ability to create, around us.
Find the man who is spending 20 years of his life learning how to brew the best soy sauce, and you’ll find a man who soaks in wonder. That man will bestow more life on you in a second compared to Jeff Bezos and his juggernaut of a company, I would almost guarantee it.
The kicker is this - tasting is not reserved for the mouth only. The one who doesn’t know great food probably doesn’t know great music, or great poetry, or great painting, or great design, etc. The word “great” probably doesn’t exist in his vocabulary, at least not the purest definition of it. The man who knows true greatness understands that he stands far from it, though invited to pursue it with all his might. That man will lead to rich beauty, the other man will lead to something else.
Beware of following men and women who don’t taste - who don’t seek to taste, to truly taste.