Your wine experience cycle
Your wine experience, your thoughts about it, and the words you use to describe it are different things. Yet they are part of a useful cycle.
Your inner experience is boundless. It doesn’t have ups or downs, or rights or wrongs. It simply exists. Constantly shifting, expanding, and contradicting itself. Never the same, but always true.
Your thoughts, however, are limited. They help us make sense of the world by deciding which parts of the experience to keep and which to discard.
Your words refine those thoughts even further, shaping your ideas so they can withstand scrutiny when they meet the outside world. While often driven by vanity, expressing thoughts can still aid in expanding your experience.
The sequence is completed when your thoughts and words become the foundation for new experiences, continuing the cycle.
But there’s a catch.
You don’t live in isolation. The outside world (peers and so-called wine experts) constantly offers input. Some of it is helpful, but much of it is distracting. It’s tempting to absorb others’ words instead of crafting your own, but this corrupts the process and takes you off your personal path.
However, you can learn to manage it.
The key is to complete your own cycle — experience, thoughts, words — before letting external opinions in. This keeps the process authentic and true to your experience.
By all means, discuss your wine experience with others, but make sure you’ve done your work first. Write your own script before letting outside voices shape it.