What used to be a treat becomes the minimum.
I can afford to eat anywhere I want and nothing tastes good anymore.
The best meal I ever had was a $2 plate of chicken adobo from a cart outside a warehouse in Long Beach. I was 24. I'd been unloading trucks since 5am. I was so hungry I could feel it in my teeth. I sat on a pallet in the parking lot and ate it with a plastic fork and I remember every bite fifteen years later.
Last month I had a $47 omakase in Lisbon. Twelve courses. Sake pairings. I couldn't tell you what a single piece tasted like. I spent most of the meal thinking about whether it was as good as a place I went to in Tokyo last year.
That's the trap. You build a life where you can afford the upgrade. So you upgrade. Every time. Better seats. Better hotels. Nicer coffee. And each upgrade resets the floor. What used to be a treat becomes the minimum. What used to be exciting becomes acceptable. What used to be acceptable becomes intolerable.
I used to love hostels. Not in a "look how humble I am" way. The shared kitchen conversations. The random guy from Norway who knows a spot the guidebooks don't list. The chaos of it. When I was delivering burritos at 35 and sleeping in my childhood bedroom, a $30 hostel bunk in Mexico felt like freedom.
Last year I booked a hostel for three nights in Chiang Mai because I was feeling nostalgic. Left after one night. Couldn't handle the noise. Couldn't handle the shared bathroom. Couldn't sleep on the mattress. Same guy. Same hostels. But my body had been recalibrated by king beds and blackout curtains and I couldn't undo it.
You don't notice it happening. That's the thing. You don't wake up one day and decide you're too good for the middle seat. It happens one flight at a time. You pay for the upgrade once because you had a long week. Then again because the flight is over four hours. Then again because why wouldn't you. And then you're the guy who gets genuinely irritated sitting in economy and you don't remember becoming him.
You've done some version of this. Maybe not with flights. Maybe it's coffee. You used to drink whatever was in the pot and it was fine. Now you have a pour-over and a subscription to beans from some farm in Guatemala and a cup of regular drip from a gas station tastes like an insult. Maybe it's restaurants. You used to split appetizers and feel like you were living. Now you send food back.
My parents never upgraded anything. Same car until it wouldn't start. Same couch until the springs came through the cushions. My mom made rice and whatever protein was cheapest and we ate it and we were fine. I'm not romanticizing that. I'm just saying she seemed to enjoy Tuesday night dinner more than I enjoyed that omakase. She's been eating the same twelve meals for forty years and she's not bored.
I was surfing a few weeks ago at a break I'd never tried. Messy, wind-chopped, inconsistent. Nothing like the clean sets I'd gotten spoiled on. I almost paddled in. Then I caught a sloppy right that had no business being fun and rode it all the way to the sand grinning like an idiot.
That's the feeling. The one I keep losing. The ability to be surprised by something that isn't perfect.
I don't have a clean answer for this. I can't downgrade my way back to the 24-year-old eating adobo on a loading dock. That guy is gone. But I've started catching myself in the act. When I'm eating something and I notice my brain ranking it against a meal from last month, I stop. Put the phone away. Take one bite with nothing to compare it to. Sometimes it resets something. Sometimes the thing in front of me becomes enough.
The $2 plate of chicken adobo wasn't the best meal because of the food. It was the best meal because I didn't know anything better existed.
The richest I've ever felt was when I couldn't afford to compare.
— Best, Jose
