Have you ever paid attention to your preferences? Like, really close attention? I started to pay attention a couple years back and realized they are always there, constantly generating low-grade discomfort. “I like this… and I don’t like that! Gimme more of this and less of that!” So. Freaking. Annoying!

Apologies for the crude metaphor, but let’s be real… Preferences are jock itch of the mind.

My foray into awareness of my preferences started after my first five-day silent meditation retreat. If you haven’t done one of these, they are painful, as you are locked in silence with your thoughts. But eventually, if you are lucky (or you just give up trying to fight the process) you start to put some distance between your “self” and the random thoughts that come and go all throughout the day. It was kinda cool to see that I am not my thoughts. But I had to spend a lot of time doing nothing to experience this.

Anyway, after I left the retreat, I started noticing how often I switched songs to find one I liked when my playlist was shuffling. I thought… what is up with this? Without even knowing it’s happening, my preferences apparently have complete control over my finger, forcing it to hit the skip button to find a song with the right combination of tones and beats to induce maximal auditory satisfaction. Then three to four minutes later, the process happens all over again.

So, I tried an experiment. When my preferences told me to switch the song, I instead did nothing. I just listened to whatever song was presented to me by the Amazon Music algorithm or SiriusXM. It was very hard to do this at first. My mind rebelled. It told me something like, “You have control! Switch the damn song and find something more pleasing to us!” I listened to that voice but respectfully declined and just tried to immerse myself in whatever song I thought I didn’t like.

And guess what happened? Songs I didn’t think I liked ended up opening new doors to music that I had never before entered. My experience of life expanded in this small way, as I started to expand my preferences to include this new music that until that point I had arbitrarily avoided.

I’d love to tell you that I have conquered my preferences and still openly and joyously accept every song that comes my way. But I don’t. Actually it was only about a week before I went back to switching songs again.

But, I learned a few lessons that have stuck with me.

I have this visual that I picture when I am in a funk, which I now understand usually comes from the external world being out of sync with the way I want it to be. I see myself, small and depressed, sitting in a room in my mind made of solid brick walls. Those walls are made of my preferences, which my mind has constructed over the years - each dislike and like a brick in the walls that now entrap me.

I realize this is an extreme image. But it’s really not that excessive when you think about how people mistreat each other, wars start, climate change accelerates, and generally speaking, all problems begin. If you trace them back, they all start with preferences. I like X and don’t like Y. Why? Who the heck knows, I just do (most of us never ask the “why” question). But if you let your mind reinforce this preference, then maybe you could become part of group X and start to dislike people in group Y. Now you are divided from group Y and probably will act in a way that will bring hatred back from group Y, further reinforcing your belief that thing Y and group Y is rotten. This hatred, sometimes born out of random accidental allegiances, then becomes toxic oxygen that feels ever present in the air around us (especially today), just waiting for someone to light a match.

Anyway, I go down this pessimistic thought exercise to point out that so much of our hatred for each other stems from feeding our somewhat arbitrary likes and dislikes.

But this image also reminds me that I have the control over these bricks. Should I choose, I can walk right through them into the spaciousness and freedom that could be my life. But first, I have to start the painful process of detaching from my preferences, which can be really hard if they have formed my identity.

I have found that a helpful starting point for those looking to tear down their prison walls is realizing the bricks are not at all solid.

Bear with me as I walk through some logic. Something that is solid is permanent. It is a fixture that cannot be removed. When preferences morph into our identity, they can feel especially solid, because if we start to question them, we start to question the very nature of who we are, which can be a difficult thing to do. But let’s start with two examples of innocuous preferences to see that preferences can change over time and are situationally dependent.

I’m sure you can think of many preferences that have changed over time or are situationally dependent. The point is if you can think of even one in your life, then this disproves that preferences (as a rule) are solid, and opens up the possibility to them being fluid. And if they are fluid, then you can choose to change them. You can choose to see through them. You can transform them from solid brick into thin air, and then get up and walk out of your mental prison into a new life.

One warning if you choose to head down this path. I have found that it is pointless to try to go to the extreme and force away all preferences. First, you will probably fail, as all humans have evolved to form preferences. But second, as I went down this path, I noticed that shedding all preferences is itself a preference. I do not like these pesky preferences that pop into my head. I do like the absence of preferences. See? Just another preference.

The real work, in my view, is to see your preferences when they come up, and if they bring you joy (and don’t hurt others) go ahead and indulge them! For example, I love coffee. The more exotic the coffee, the better! For a time I tried to be grateful drinking crappy coffee each morning. It worked for a few days. But as I drank my swill, I would dream of a cup of Ethiopian pour-over. I reflected on this and realized that there is no harm in drinking great coffee sometimes. Or even most days! The harm comes in my attachment to coffee. So, I make it a point when I stay at a hotel to just drink the hotel’s coffee (which usually isn’t great). Or sometimes I’ll just buy a large cheap bag of coffee from Costco, drink that for a couple weeks, and then reward myself with a $20 bag of coffee from some remote mountain in Bolivia afterwards. In other words, I try to indulge in this preference sometimes while remaining loosely attached to it.

I also personally try to investigate any labels that have stemmed from preferences in my life. I have gravitated towards veganism and minimalism over my life, for what I think are good reasons. But as soon as I slapped the “vegan” or “minimalist” label on myself, I dropped another set of bricks down in my mental prison. So now I eat meat and I buy nice stuff from time to time. That’s not to say you have to do this! It’s just the path that works for me that balances my responsibility to the world with my mental health. But really my main goal is to be just fine if one day I woke up and there was no meat to eat and no nice stuff to buy.

Nowadays, the word freedom is thrown around a lot. But I think the word has been bastardized by people trying to secure our votes or sell us something. This sort of superficial freedom isn’t true freedom.

One type of this “freedom” is the freedom to hold prejudiced views towards others. There’s a lot of this going on right now. But is this really freedom in the long run? If we put down and disenfranchise others that are part of an out-group to feel more connected to an in-group, do we expect our own family’s safety to improve? Or should we expect the out-group to fight back even more aggressively? What’s the end game here? Is our plan for all of us to arm ourselves to the teeth and walk around like Rambo? That may dissuade others from attacking us, but doesn’t foster a life where we are free to experience curiosity, wonder, and mystery. Rather we’ll just be walking around constantly looking for the next threat. This is not life. It’s a prison.

Another type of false freedom is when companies target us with marketing selling freedom as a Caribbean cruise, a new hand bag, or (for me) a fancy running watch. Of course, if we have the money to spend on these things it is OK to indulge from time to time (as discussed earlier.. side note, I did recently buy myself a fancy running watch). But companies don’t target only people that have ample disposable funds to spend on such things. They instead offer loans on just about everything so we can borrow money from the future to pay for these material “freedoms.” If we keep indulging mindlessly in this we’ll end up trapped under a pile of debt. Another prison. Go straight to jail and do not pass go.

The good news is there is a different type of freedom that comes from realizing that we are so much more than the sum of our likes and dislikes. Detaching from my preferences breaks down the walls of my mental prison, opening my life up to curiosity, wonder, and awe. Without as much attachment to preferences I try more new things, learn more new things, take more risks, and generally am able to live a more exciting, fun, and loving life. This, in turn, then reduces my fear of death… which is what spurred me to explore all these topics (and start this blog) in the first place.

But then, in a flash, I am pulled back to my preferences. Gimme back my fancy coffee, a comfortable bed with the one pillow I love, and my favorite bowl of oatmeal (don’t forget the freakin’ pumpkin seeds, or else)! But now at least I can laugh at this endless cycle. Maybe that’s the best I’ll ever be able to do. And that will be enough.