Playing with preferences
Paradise? Sure, as long as I can sit in the shade. (Image by Julius Silver)
When I bought sheets to outfit our tiny apartment, I just knew that they had to be 100% cotton.
I’m a snob when it comes to sheets, and a cotton/poly blend wasn’t going to do it for me. Maybe I’m too sensitive, like the princess of "The Princess and the Pea,” but cotton/poly blend sheets makes me feel like I’m sleeping in a plastic bag. So I walked down the aisle of the local Wal-Mart until I found a few 100% cotton sheet sets and picked one.
But over the next few months, I felt that something was off. These sheets just felt so flimsy. They were so soft that they always felt dirty, even when they were perfectly clean. I realized that even though the softness of sheets is often a selling point, I didn’t like soft sheets. I longed for the thick, cool, crisp sheets I had had has a child. Where were those?
Feeling like a weirdo, I googled “crisp cotton sheets” and discovered the world of cotton percale, a shirt-like, matte weave that was exactly what I wanted. So now I’m a person who prefers not just 100% cotton sheets, but a specific type of cotton sheets.
It’s nice to think about having a home that’s completely suited to my preferences. But as much as I enjoy getting into a bed with cotton percale sheets on it, I understand that preferences are also a trap. Having preferences narrows the range of options that will suit you at any given time. When you have to have things exactly a certain way, you might spend weeks searching for just the right sofa or china pattern or bath towels. As Steve Jobs famously did, you might go without furniture or other essentials until you find the items that meet your exact specifications. It’s an exhausting way to live.
Since we gave away or sold most of what we had previously had, we had a lot of work to do to outfit our new home. At first, I spent hours going down the rabbit hole on furniture websites, trying to find something that ticked all the boxes — and then contemplating which tradeoffs were reasonable when I couldn’t find the perfect items.
And then…I gave up. Not only was cute but poorly reviewed furniture not in alignment with my preferences (“UPDATE: Six weeks later, the frame cracked and the manufacturer won’t respond to our inquiries”), neither was endless shopping.
So we bought an old beat up chair and sofa from the sellers of our house. My husband spent an hour designing and building a bookcase out of a few boards. We went shopping in my parents’ cavernous basement and came away with some of my grandmother’s old dishes and a dresser of unknown provenance. I found a semi-broken but usable set of plastic and metal shelves offered for free in a neighbor’s yard.
We bought a cheap headboard and bed frame online. When they arrived, they didn’t fit together like they were supposed to, but we shoved the bed frame up against the wall to trap the headboard and it works just fine.
Nothing matches the vision I had. But that’s honestly fine. Having preferences doesn’t mean that I have to be a slave to them. I have more interesting places to put my time and energy.
Every so often, I may have a realization like the one about my sheets. I already know that I prefer knitting with nickel-plated circular needles as opposed to aluminum straight needles; I prefer white towels to colorful ones; I prefer dark roast coffee to light roast. It can be a delight to uncover these little details about who you are — and who your loved ones are. The trick, as I see it, is to enjoy the things you prefer without becoming so attached to them that you must have them.
In fact, engaging with things that we are unfamiliar with or are strongly against our preferences is often a recipe for growth (and sometimes, a bad night’s sleep). From Green Eggs and Ham to Coming to America to King Lear, literature is filled with examples of people benefiting from not getting exactly what they want — or suffering because they were too attached to the specific things they wanted. There is a balance we can find between comfort and unease, likes and dislikes.
Kids in school are learning which topics, subjects, and activities they enjoy the most. And yet, they cannot focus exclusively on those; there is much to be gained from pushing through the discomfort of something that is difficult or boring at first. At work, we can build a career out of what we’re best at, but if we have to have everything just so, we may find ourselves moving from gig to gig without ever finding one that is exactly right. And a home, ideally, is shared with others; there is constant compromise between family members as they all come to accept that not all preferences can be honored at all times.
Preferences don’t have to be needs or wants; they can be part of who we are without defining us. Sometimes they are charming or satisfying; sometimes, we must let them go. And we don’t always have a choice in that, but occasionally, we do. From this uncomfortable chair, I raise a $2 glass to your evolution as a human being, with all that entails.
By the way: This week I got to talk to Mitko Karshovski at That Remote Life about remote work, education, and online school. Check out our conversation!
