I don’t know anyone whose life has been one continuous high or one continuous low. Do you?

Our brains are designed to compare and contrast. Light or dark. Friend or foe. Hot or cold. Big or small. These measures only makes sense in a comparative way. I know “heavy” by contrasting it with “light”. If every object I’d ever lifted in my life weighed 22 pounds (10 kilos for some of us!) what would I call that – heavy? or light? I’d have no way of answering the question.

So it goes with our lives. Good times, bad times. We’ve all had our share. But we’re all using a different measure. For some of us, a bad day means our BFF didn’t respond to our text message. For others, it means we lost half our family in a tragic car accident. Everything is relative.

So what is the implication for those of us who want to live more mindfully?

Be aware of what gets added to reality by our minds.

Whatever you’re experiencing, something has been added to it by your body, brain and mind. Even before you become aware of that experience, a kind of flavour has been added to it. Baked into it, so to speak.

Imagine a tasteless dough. No flavour whatsoever. Now imagine a baker adds either salt or sugar to this dough, then bakes it and serves it to you. When you eat it, it will taste salty or sweet. You can’t taste the original dough! You can only taste the sweet dough or the salty dough.

We’re designed the same way: our body, brain and mind add salt or sugar to every experience we have, BEFORE we have it. The salty experiences we call unpleasant or bad or awful or tragic. The sweet experiences we call pleasant or good or wonderful and enjoyable.

What would an experience be like without this flavour? We can’t know that. We can only notice that the flavour is already there by the time we become aware of it.

On the one hand, this is rather irrelevant, but on the other hand, it can really change how you experience life. Shakespeare’s Hamlet says “there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so”.

Understanding that all experience, all life is altered by our bodies, brains and minds to taste good or taste bad can make us less reactive to it. We can be with it more easily. We can experience the unpleasantness of an experience with less emotional reactivity. We can experience the pleasantness of an experience with less attachment or craving or desire.

NOTE: this won’t change how pleasant or unpleasant the experience is! It’ll still feel shitty or fantastic. But there’s a shift that can happen when you keep in mind, even as you’re having that experience, that this sweetness or bitterness reflects a “flavouring” added the body and mind.

We can develop this perspective when we practice meditation, because as we practice what is often called witnessing, we loosen our attachment and aversion to experiences. We don’t automatically crave more of the “positive” experiences and back away from the “negative” ones. We can get curious about them instead.

We can gain just enough detachment to gain a little perspective. Is it really this good or this bad, or am I experiencing it that way because of an unconscious flavouring that’s been added to the experience? When we observe closely, when we carefully pay attention, we start to notice the flavouring that’s been added. That doesn’t remove the flavouring. But it shifts how we experience. We become less reactive and better observers. The experience is less about us – we can stand a tiny bit apart from it.

I wish you nothing but good times. No bad times. And at the same time, I know this is impossible. I know that flavouring will be added to every single one of your experiences. So instead, I wish you perspective. I wish you understanding and insight into this process. May you know the happiness that does not depend on conditions.