I don’t like beets. Yet, once or twice a year, I eat a beet. Importantly, the beet does not care if I like it or not. The beet is not improved by my enjoyment of it, nor, conversely, is it depreciated by my violent salivation and nauseated bathroom twerking. The beet is impervious to my opinion of it.

I test and retest my dislike of beets because cultivating a taste for them would increase my enjoyment of edible things. It would broaden the rainbow of yum. The beet would be the same, but I would be improved. I would have more opportunity for pleasure and variety.

My goal in life is to cultivate a taste for many things. This is not an argument for post-modernism. I don’t mean to say, “Everything is equal if you can just choke it down.” This is not a hotdog eating contest. I mean to say, I want to experience and believe and understand other people’s enjoyment of the many things that I find strange or gross. I want to learn to like the dirty beet.