Every choice is a confession

I believe our aesthetic taste is incredibly important, maybe even more important than we admit because it reveals our deepest values inside of us.

If you like plastic versus wood, if you're drawn to chrome or brass, to minimalism or maximalism, to sharp edges or soft curves.... it's telling you something about who you are at the core... and perhaps it's telling everyone else something too, although not always the same thing, because we're all projecting our own stories onto other people's choices.

I think these preferences, big or small, aren't random. They come from somewhere deep and from whatever part of yourself that decided a long time ago what safety looks like to you, what home feels like or what truth feels like. You know all the little things that define who you are, your invisible inner world made visible through what you choose to surround yourself with.

For example: someone who loves plastic might be chasing efficiency, or they just want to separate themselves from the old, from history. Someone who loves wood might be more interested in permanence, authenticity and warmth.

But maybe it's the opposite for both of them. Maybe the plastic person just grew up poor and wood meant poverty to them because their apartment always smelled like mildew. Wood was a poor man's material, the thing you had because you couldn't afford anything better. Maybe the wood person grew up in some sterile suburban house where everything was beige and perfect and suffocating.

I don't know really. But what I do know is that your taste isn't superficial. Even when it seems like it is sometimes, and even when you're just scrolling through an online store half ass paying attention to it. Choices are made, they will be made, and there is a reason for each of them.

If you're shopping around and picking out a lamp or a coffee mug, you're essentially picking a world view. You're saying "this is what I think matters to me, this is what I think will last, this is what I think deserves to exist in my life." You're making a hundred tiny, personal declarations about your values without even realizing it. You also likely don't think much about them, because most of the time we run on autopilot.

And I think a lot of us rarely reflect on these things long enough to understand where it's coming from. Why do we reach for one thing over the other? Why do we find some things beautiful and the other thing ugly, or just right?

We move through the world making aesthetic choices constantly, curating our environments, our homes and our lives, and most of the time we're not even conscious of what we're choosing or why it matters.

But it does matter.

Your aesthetic taste and choices are a representation of your inner landscape. They're a way of understanding yourself without using any words or explanations, but you do need the willingness to paying close ATTENTION at what choices you make and then find out YOUR WHY behind them.

I find this exercise incredibly rewarding because for many, this is the first time they truly understand what is happening around them, when they're not running on autopilot.

Yours truly,
Tobias