"If you do want to be attentive, engaged, and simply human, the only choice, really, is whether you’re going to be speaking or listening." I love that you end this meaningful piece with a challenge and a reminder of our own agency. Because while we may be one way or another by nature, we can change - as you've said and others as well. As years pass, I find myself maybe just as sensitive but wholly less reactive. . .more willing to ask myself "did that person intend a cut with that comment or did I understand wrong, etc etc" and it's made this sensitive soul much more enjoyable. Your essays are always so packed and thoughtful - they feel peripatetic, as if we've just walked and talked the park together.
"Even though sensitivity might in fact be a dial, with some people more squishy and other people more sturdy, I doubt that you have the ability to control where you land on the spectrum."
I may have misunderstood what you mean by this, but if I have not, then this is very wrong. I live with a (now very retired) Swedish army officer who for the longest time was directly involved in the training of conscripts doing their compulsory military service. There were indeed some 'squishy' people his job was to toughen up -- and that can be done -- but the larger job was to take people who weren't very sensitive at all and train them to a certain level of sensitivity -- enough that they could make discerning judgments as part of an assumed guerilla war (against the Russians). So, wherever you start on the dial, you can move? and perhaps a great deal?
Thank you very much for the comment, Laura. Yes, I would agree—perhaps that is very wrong. Although I would still consider it one possibility, and my first impression, which I hope contrasts at least a little with later sentences. People certainly adapt, they certainly learn, and the world would be quite strange if that weren't true. To become a sommelier is, rather literally, an acquired taste. But I do wonder whether temperamental and sensitivity changes are closer to adjustments or transformations? Is it like putting on glasses or getting new eyes?
Funny you mention that! As it turns out, the same Swedish retired officer went and trained as a Sommelier! :) It's something that always interested him. I think that some of this is innate -- he is a "super taster" and has the fungiform papillae to show it. His grandfather was a famous cheesemaker, and we both think that he has inherited a certain talent in that direction from him.
But I too am a supertaster -- and he is much more discerning than I am. When he was studying for the WSET-3 exam see: https://www.wsetglobal.com/ he and some classmates trained by tasting again and again and again at our house. So I got to prime the tests, with the wine in black glasses and covered in black bags and the like. I began this journey with the expectation that a significant amount of what was being claimed was just 'woo-woo'. But no, again and again, people who had no way to collaborate would discover the same subtle tastes. So it is in the wine, not just in their heads.
I got more discerning as well. But not nearly as much as he did. Some of this may reflect natural ability. Some of this is due to the fact that he cares a lot more about this than I do. Some of it was that I wasn't going to classes every day stuffing my head with book learning about this stuff. And some of this is because the person who stuffs the wine in the coloured bags cannot help but taste for 'what she knows is there' while the rest can taste for 'whatever is there'. I think the second is a better sort of training, in that you learn more.
I never got the sense that I had 'new tastebuds'. I just was learning how to use the ones I had better, with greater sensitivity.
Thank you for adding that story. How you summarized it—"I never got the sense that I had 'new tastebuds'. I just was learning how to use the ones I had better, with greater sensitivity."—sounds exactly right to me.
Perhaps a cliche, but our weaknesses are our strengths, and vice versa. The sensitive souls perceive things invisible to the indifferent, and the indifferent are not constrained by the fears and injuries of the sensitive. People are often largely shaped by adulthood, but sometimes the passage of significant time can modify one’s disposition. I’ve met sensitive souls who have sharpened over time, and brusque personalities who have softened. Thanks Charles, your work always takes me on a journey of thought, introspection, and enjoyment.
"Sharpened over time" is a phrase that I appreciate and can recognize. Perhaps the alternative over a long period of time would even be more worrying—remaining the same despite the years passing. That sounds like something is amiss. Thank you for the very kind words and adding your thoughts, John.
I think that many people, when young, get the mistaken idea that if they want to be more sensitive and aware in the world they need to double down on what the Big 5 Personality test calls neuroticism. A friend of mine who is a full time youth psychologist, and who gets assigned the hard cases -- people who have tried to commit suicide, or harm themselves and others in terrible ways says there is no particular relationship between the two --- while there are plenty of neurotic and sensitive souls, and literature abounds with their stories because lots of them write and make movies .... there are plenty of neurotic souls who are not that sensitive to the real world; indeed their main problem may be that they sensitive to an imagined world that is largely delusional. And there are people who are very sensitive but also score low in neuroticism. Their lives are not full of drama, so people don't write many books or movies about them. (And psychologists don't write about them, because they basically never see any.) She tells me that she has adolescent patients who don't really want to learn techniques from Cognitive Behavioural Therapy to manage their anxiety, because they believe that without their anxiety they wouldn't be 'as aware', or 'as sensitive', or sometimes 'as special'. They think that they have to get really upset about things because otherwise they don't care, which is often why they end up in such a terrible state that they are assigned my friend as a therapist -- they are willing to shred their lives just to make a statement about how much they care. I don't know what we can do about this in our communities, aside from mentioning that too much neuroticism is bad for you, when the subject comes up.
Outside of the specific issue that you mentioned with adolescent patients, it does seem that leaving a current identity—regardless of how difficult it makes your life—can be more work than adopting a new identity. Obviously you can't do one without the other, but learning something new isn't usually, I believe, the tricky part. It is giving up the current self for an imagined self. And perhaps you described an over example of this problem. Thank you for the comment, Laura.
"If you do want to be attentive, engaged, and simply human, the only choice, really, is whether you’re going to be speaking or listening." I love that you end this meaningful piece with a challenge and a reminder of our own agency. Because while we may be one way or another by nature, we can change - as you've said and others as well. As years pass, I find myself maybe just as sensitive but wholly less reactive. . .more willing to ask myself "did that person intend a cut with that comment or did I understand wrong, etc etc" and it's made this sensitive soul much more enjoyable. Your essays are always so packed and thoughtful - they feel peripatetic, as if we've just walked and talked the park together.
Thank you very much for the comment and the kind words, Trilety.
"Even though sensitivity might in fact be a dial, with some people more squishy and other people more sturdy, I doubt that you have the ability to control where you land on the spectrum."
I may have misunderstood what you mean by this, but if I have not, then this is very wrong. I live with a (now very retired) Swedish army officer who for the longest time was directly involved in the training of conscripts doing their compulsory military service. There were indeed some 'squishy' people his job was to toughen up -- and that can be done -- but the larger job was to take people who weren't very sensitive at all and train them to a certain level of sensitivity -- enough that they could make discerning judgments as part of an assumed guerilla war (against the Russians). So, wherever you start on the dial, you can move? and perhaps a great deal?
But perhaps I am misunderstanding you altogether.
Thank you very much for the comment, Laura. Yes, I would agree—perhaps that is very wrong. Although I would still consider it one possibility, and my first impression, which I hope contrasts at least a little with later sentences. People certainly adapt, they certainly learn, and the world would be quite strange if that weren't true. To become a sommelier is, rather literally, an acquired taste. But I do wonder whether temperamental and sensitivity changes are closer to adjustments or transformations? Is it like putting on glasses or getting new eyes?
Funny you mention that! As it turns out, the same Swedish retired officer went and trained as a Sommelier! :) It's something that always interested him. I think that some of this is innate -- he is a "super taster" and has the fungiform papillae to show it. His grandfather was a famous cheesemaker, and we both think that he has inherited a certain talent in that direction from him.
But I too am a supertaster -- and he is much more discerning than I am. When he was studying for the WSET-3 exam see: https://www.wsetglobal.com/ he and some classmates trained by tasting again and again and again at our house. So I got to prime the tests, with the wine in black glasses and covered in black bags and the like. I began this journey with the expectation that a significant amount of what was being claimed was just 'woo-woo'. But no, again and again, people who had no way to collaborate would discover the same subtle tastes. So it is in the wine, not just in their heads.
I got more discerning as well. But not nearly as much as he did. Some of this may reflect natural ability. Some of this is due to the fact that he cares a lot more about this than I do. Some of it was that I wasn't going to classes every day stuffing my head with book learning about this stuff. And some of this is because the person who stuffs the wine in the coloured bags cannot help but taste for 'what she knows is there' while the rest can taste for 'whatever is there'. I think the second is a better sort of training, in that you learn more.
I never got the sense that I had 'new tastebuds'. I just was learning how to use the ones I had better, with greater sensitivity.
Thank you for adding that story. How you summarized it—"I never got the sense that I had 'new tastebuds'. I just was learning how to use the ones I had better, with greater sensitivity."—sounds exactly right to me.
Perhaps a cliche, but our weaknesses are our strengths, and vice versa. The sensitive souls perceive things invisible to the indifferent, and the indifferent are not constrained by the fears and injuries of the sensitive. People are often largely shaped by adulthood, but sometimes the passage of significant time can modify one’s disposition. I’ve met sensitive souls who have sharpened over time, and brusque personalities who have softened. Thanks Charles, your work always takes me on a journey of thought, introspection, and enjoyment.
"Sharpened over time" is a phrase that I appreciate and can recognize. Perhaps the alternative over a long period of time would even be more worrying—remaining the same despite the years passing. That sounds like something is amiss. Thank you for the very kind words and adding your thoughts, John.
I think that many people, when young, get the mistaken idea that if they want to be more sensitive and aware in the world they need to double down on what the Big 5 Personality test calls neuroticism. A friend of mine who is a full time youth psychologist, and who gets assigned the hard cases -- people who have tried to commit suicide, or harm themselves and others in terrible ways says there is no particular relationship between the two --- while there are plenty of neurotic and sensitive souls, and literature abounds with their stories because lots of them write and make movies .... there are plenty of neurotic souls who are not that sensitive to the real world; indeed their main problem may be that they sensitive to an imagined world that is largely delusional. And there are people who are very sensitive but also score low in neuroticism. Their lives are not full of drama, so people don't write many books or movies about them. (And psychologists don't write about them, because they basically never see any.) She tells me that she has adolescent patients who don't really want to learn techniques from Cognitive Behavioural Therapy to manage their anxiety, because they believe that without their anxiety they wouldn't be 'as aware', or 'as sensitive', or sometimes 'as special'. They think that they have to get really upset about things because otherwise they don't care, which is often why they end up in such a terrible state that they are assigned my friend as a therapist -- they are willing to shred their lives just to make a statement about how much they care. I don't know what we can do about this in our communities, aside from mentioning that too much neuroticism is bad for you, when the subject comes up.
Outside of the specific issue that you mentioned with adolescent patients, it does seem that leaving a current identity—regardless of how difficult it makes your life—can be more work than adopting a new identity. Obviously you can't do one without the other, but learning something new isn't usually, I believe, the tricky part. It is giving up the current self for an imagined self. And perhaps you described an over example of this problem. Thank you for the comment, Laura.