I write this inspired, as it were, by the newborn realization that I could very nearly recreate my favorite cocktail from a combination of some Canadianized, spicy-but-too-sweet Manhattan with a bit of nice Speyside single-malt. A neatly-aged and textured notebook covers my glass as I attempt to put into words a thought currently threatening to contort itself into a call to an even more passionate embracing of paradox, greater at least than the “mixed signals” my sister’s eyebrows have enjoyed entire workouts over. Do not tempt me to drown my overwrought ideas in sweet oblivion, my friend — ah, a lovely homespun Beretta! — for those very thoughts maintain that fire which burns even as it heals. (Speak I of my mind or of my ego, or both? You decide.)

Let me wax eloquent over this one grand phrase tossed about by lips chapped, moist, pursed, or laughing: “You do you.”

A sister — not the eyebrow-raising one — laughs as she points out her “soju approach to life.” Soju is smooth, nice, cheap, comes in neat flavors, and is easy to find. Compared to this drinking-for-drinking’s sake, I am a snobbish, sniffy sipper of ‘spensive scotches who scrounges around thriftstores for $2 shoes and shirts just so the budget would allow for another “unnecessary purchase” of some $90 bottle of [insert something local or almost-fancy].

She asks me why sometimes. If you have a thin wallet, should you not try and match your taste to what that allows? If you have only one life, enjoy it — why care beyond what you are directly responsible for? Why reach for nuance and texture and craftsmanship as long as the thing does its job? — as in that your paycheck covers the bills with enough left over to make life fun enough to not feel pointless. Eat, drink, and enjoy the fruits of your labor. That is all one can ask of life, soju-lifers say.

Lovely, I say. I have tasted soju before. It is too dangerous for me. It would make me cease to care for the grittiness of a well-crafted woodlands-inspired gin, for the stories aged brandy carries in their layered flavor notes, for the things I had to say no to to enjoy this the way it is supposed to.

If I allow myself to stop at what I might ask of life, I would hold myself in such disgust I wonder if I would even care about another Beretta before deciding not to see another morning. I do not only ask things of life — it also asks things of me. This dialogue has resulted in (and continues to develop) a curated bundle of “this is good, this is bad, this is meh but let us keep it, this is meh in an ‘if we let this continue it will slowly kill you’ sort of way” sorts of opinions and likes/dislikes that bring me ever closer to essence of the human experience and further from those who suppress their humanity in an effort to be understood by their fellows. It is easier to maintain control in sharing than in true mutual understanding; it is safer to understand and signal that understanding than to connect beyond words; it is still safer to tamely connect than to experience each other, together, in all our temporality and imperfection and changeability.

Two years I wrote on three approaches to smoking and the analogies between those choices and one’s choices in approaching life — the point was the levels of pre-fabrication one has access to in the spending of a life. This soju-versus-Speyside is more about the decision itself — less of the “what are my options?”” and more “what does choice mean here?”

There is more poetry in mending a sock stitch by careful stitch than in swinging by Costco to grab that cotton 4-pack just because you could afford to. There is a gentle, life-giving dignity in the treatment of a drive or commute as an experience itself instead of just something that must be done to get from A to B as testified by the growing collection of CDs in your car ranging from Nirvana to 1970s Canto pop to Vivaldi. And yes, there is more enjoyment in the savoring of a drop of single-malt that someone paid attention to in the making of than in a something that did not have that in its coming-into-existence.

Poetry, I suppose, is part of what guides some of us. There is more to a thing than the thing itself — there is context, texture, the way it makes contact with your being and the way it withdraws from it; there is the negative time or space or ideas around and within it; and a, so much more. There is a world of difference between speaking five seconds before a song ends and five seconds after. That awareness, self-control, and understanding is worth examining and updating every now and then.

Not everyone sees that layer, or cares for it. My sister points to the thoughts of Kierkegaard and Rand and Nietzsche and Dostoyevsky — all of which she has read, understood, and appreciated at some point — and comes back with the two responses that lawyers love: “It depends” and “So what?” You can never reach the end of questions; one does not often find people to have actual conversations with; no one individual changes the world on their own. Why bother with the lofty stuff if you could hardly afford to?

Because quality is not something you measure or define or buy, it is something that is. And it certainty is not something you would trade down with, if you care for it and know it. One bottle of Speyside satisfies me far more than cases of yogurt soju. Is it just scratching an elevated itch instead of a “lower” one? Perhaps.

But then you get into that fuzzy category we call “maybe” and “trying” and “I do not know how much I care yet.” You have the odd friend who fills a waterbottle with wine and sneaks it into places with a smirk and a side-glance, like a “I have done worse a million times, trust me this is nothing” attitude that triggers an outward laugh and an internal head-tilt over which behavioral pattern this action stems from and whether this shade of grey — both in the choice of wine as well as the particular way of enjoying it — is one you actually endorse. Some nods are instant and whole-hearted; others are slow and measured, coming after a few seconds of deliberation; still others are given hours or days (or weeks!) afterwards when the singularity and significance of a certain experience finally set in and your opinion is no longer relevant to anything or anyone else but yourself.

Here then you realize that that has been the case all along, and that it is a grey space, this grey matter processing information, controlling movement, and regulating memory and emotions. The folds, the size and weight, the streaks of red and white and black throughout our minds and beings are different person to person, making the whole “walking in each other’s shoes” only a fragment of the story.

So yeah. You do you. I do me.

[punchline redacted]