Because your reference point for everything keeps sliding upward and you can't drag it back down.
I bit into the best pastel de nata in Lisbon last week and felt nothing.
Golden, warm, cream still hot in the center. The woman behind the counter said they'd been making them the same way since 1987. The guy next to me closed his eyes on his first bite. I chewed, swallowed, and checked my phone.
Three years ago I was eating gas station taquitos at 2am in a Chevron parking lot between Chipotle deliveries. Those taquitos were disgusting. Rubber tubes of mystery meat. I can still taste them. I remember every bite because that was the best part of my night.
Now I eat whatever I want wherever I want. Sushi in Tokyo if I feel like it. Ceviche in Lima. That place in Mexico City everyone talks about. And I can't remember what I ate yesterday.
That's the trap. You build a life with no ceiling and your ability to enjoy anything inside it slowly flatlines. Not because you're ungrateful. Not because you're broken. Because your reference point for everything keeps sliding upward and you can't drag it back down.
When I was running my logistics company I looked forward to one thing every week. Friday lunch. There was a Filipino spot near the warehouse run by this old couple who recognized my voice on the phone before I said my name. Pork adobo, garlic rice, a can of Coke. Eight bucks. I ate the same thing every Friday for six years and it was perfect every single time.
It was perfect because I was exhausted. Because I'd been up since 4am loading trucks. Because my back hurt and my phone wouldn't stop buzzing and that plate of food was the one thing in my week that existed just for me. The meal didn't change. The context made it.
Now every meal is just for me. Every hour is just for me. And when everything is a treat, nothing is.
You've felt this even if you haven't called it anything. Maybe you moved somewhere beautiful and stopped noticing it after six weeks. Maybe you bought the thing you'd been wanting for years and it sat in the corner by month two. Maybe you finally got the free time you always talked about and spent it scrolling through options for what to do with it, picking nothing, feeling less than you did when you had no time at all.
It's not about the food or the travel or any one thing. It's about what happens when you strip away the constraints that made the good stuff land. The anticipation. The scarcity. The distance between a shit day and the one bright spot hiding inside it.
My dad worked six days a week his whole adult life. Every year on his birthday my mom made him pancit. Noodles. Nothing complicated. He reacted like she'd handed him a winning lottery ticket. Every year. Same dish. Same face. He wasn't performing gratitude. He just never lost the ability to be fed by something simple because his life still had hard edges for the soft things to press against.
I have access to everything he never had. And I can't feel any of it the way he felt those noodles.
I don't have a clean answer for this. I tried a gratitude journal and felt like a fraud writing "good coffee" every morning when I know damn well I could fly to Colombia and drink it at the source. I tried cutting things out, fasting from stuff I liked. That just made me irritated, not appreciative. The tricks don't work because the problem isn't attitude. The problem is that my life has no resistance in it.
The one exception is mornings I surf. Not because surfing is special. Because it hurts first. The paddle out is cold. My shoulders burn. I get worked by sets I should've ducked under. And then I catch one good wave and something in my chest cracks open for about three seconds. Not because the wave is anything remarkable. Because I earned the right to feel it.
After a session I sit on the beach and drink whatever coffee is closest. Paper cup. Lukewarm. It tastes incredible every time. Not because it's good coffee. Because my body is cold and tired and the warmth cuts through in a way it can't when I'm comfortable.
Maybe that's the only thing I've learned. The stuff that actually registers isn't the best stuff. It's whatever comes after effort or cold or waiting. A life with no friction is a life where nothing has anything to push against.
My dad knew that without reading a single book about it. He broke his body all week and came home to noodles that tasted like everything.
I do whatever I want. And nothing tastes like anything.
— Best, Jose
