Love Languages: Personal Preference and the Sense of Taste

The last sense to look at in terms of ways to communicate love, is the sense of taste.  The sense of taste is physically localized in the organ of the tongue.  Not only is the tongue the organ of taste, it is also one of the most sensitive organs of the body in terms of touch.  The detail that you can detect with your tongue is much greater than the detail you can feel with the tips of your fingers.  Just try feeling the back of your teeth with your tongue, then the back of your teeth with your fingers.  When you feel your teeth with your tongue,they feel magnified as compared to when you feel them with your fingers.  The surface of your teeth appear much more clearly in your imagination when you feel them with your tongue.

The properties of the tongue that make it so much more sensitive are its malleability - its softness - and moisture.  The composition of the tongue is not primarily intended to be an organ of touch however - it is primarily intended to be an organ of taste.  While the objectivity of the tongue as a tactile organ surpasses that of the fingers, its subjectivity in the realm of taste is surprising.

In order to taste something, you must already begin to assimilate it. In order to taste something, it must become moist, which means it must already undergo a physical change.  Odors are in air, flavors are in moisture.  Water has a greater destructuring effect on a non-aqueous physical reality than air.  When we put something in our mouth it is almost exclusively in order to destroy it and assimilate it.  Tasting is the last experience we have of something before we assimilate it.  We can still spit that something out if we decide it isn't good, or if we do not intend to assimilate it (something wine-tasters are known to do.)

When it comes to flavors, taste helps us recognize the harmonious composition of food as it compares to our own composition.  What we eat has an effect on what we become in terms of our physical nature and body.  Flavors that are sweet, spicy, salty, bitter, sour, etc. are from physical realities that have an effect on our digestion, our assimilation and on our own physical composition, harmony, and temperament.  Our preferences in taste reflect something of our preferred way of being, of our preferred way of acting and reacting.  This is perhaps one reason why our tastes are varied - behaviors and temperaments are different depending on the individual and natural composition of their bodies.  The way someone behaves depends upon both their nature and psychology, and on their personal choices.  We are not completely predetermined by our nature, by our body, but we are substantially conditioned by it.  Our personal choices, which result in our concrete actions and behaviors, depend partially upon what we are made of materially speaking and partially upon the purpose  we have discovered for our lives - our finality.  Our taste changes with time, and I think that has something - at least vaguely - to do with  changes in what we feel is important in life.  Often we even compare the events of our lives with flavors: "sweet victory," "bitter defeat," "then things went sour," "his reflections really spiced up the conversations."

So, if we look at gestures that imply taste, gestures that affect other peoples sense of taste, it is pretty obvious that this is the most analogical of gestures.  Taste with respect to food and drink is the immediate meaning of the sensation - but musical taste exists too, and so does taste in clothes, art, books, humor, etc; taste, analogically refers to one's personal preferences and interests.  So, as in the other gestures of love, let us try to distinguish between "tasteful gestures" at the different ethical levels.

At a basic level of respect, there is the recognition that everyone has different tastes, and that while imposing my own tastes on someone else is disrespectful, acknowledging that the tastes or interests of another person can legitimately differ from my own is basic respect.  The level of basic respect should enable us to avoid foolish and useless quarrels - but experience shows that living close to others requires more than just acknowledging legitimate differences in the domain of personal preferences and interests.  Certain preferences or interests might seem ridiculous or foolish to our own judgment - but if we do not learn to tolerate or resolve these differences, conflict is inevitable.

Since it is impossible to completely conceal our own preferences or interests from those who live close to us, we must adopt new gestures of taste that are open to friendship.  When we desire to begin a friendship with someone, we can start by sharing our preferences and interests, and we can try to discover their own preferences and interests.  This basic gesture of openness to friendship has to do with generalities - informing and being informed on basic likes and dislikes.  We usually don't start sharing our most unique and perhaps outrageous preferences or interests - but that will depend upon the personality of the other person.

Beyond discovering and revealing preferences and interests, there is the gesture of love which implies taking account of those preferences or interests in what we say or do to or for the person whom we love.  And beyond this simple gesture of love, the gesture of intimacy has to do with acquiring the tastes of the other person.  It is one thing to participate in an activity with someone because it interests them, and you want to support them (that is a gesture of presence) and another to learn to enjoy the activity itself.  It is one thing to sit next to someone while they watch their favorite sports program, and another thing to learn to enjoy that sports program with them.  While it is normal and healthy for a couple to have separate activities, it weighs down a close relationship when the persons involved do not occasionally choose to modify their personal preferences or interests in function of the other person.  Sometimes that acquired taste can be for something neither person has ever appreciated before.  It can be easier to acquire a taste for art, for example, when the friendship is strong.  And the developed appreciation for something beautiful or qualitative can be something special that fortifies a friendship.  This certainly touches the language of quality time, but quality time is a mix between presence and personal preferences.

Love Languages: Presence and the Sense of Smell

To begin a reflection on the gestures that engage specifically the sense of smell to communicate love, it seems clear to me that we must take a fresh look at our experience.  Love is attraction, and we are attracted to what is good.  What is our experience of goodness when it comes to smells?

Before I try to tackle the question, I think a brief divergence is important.  Attraction must be clearly distinguished from seduction.  Attraction is a natural movement towards a good.  Seduction is already a different kind of movement.  When I am attracted, I remain free to respond to the attraction or turn away.  When I am seduced, on the other hand, my judgment is focused on appearances.  Seduction involves the formal cause, whereas the source of attraction is the final cause.  We are attracted to what is goo, we are seduced by what is beautiful, by what is perfect.  The qualities of a person are kinds of perfections - these qualities may seduce us, but they cannot attract us as such.  Attraction requires a personal knowledge of someone, and so an experience not only of their qualities and defects, but a knowledge of their person.

Beauty, talents, and temperament are all superficial aspects of a human person.  you can describe a human person, but that description is not a personal knowledge, nor does it necessarily come from a personal knowledge.  Personal knowledge implies attraction.  The other's person is what causes an attraction.  Beyond all the qualities that could cause me to like them, there is the source of these qualities - the person himself.  Whereas all the qualities of a human person can seduce me, it is the other person as such who is a source of attraction.  Certainly we can talk about "attractive qualities" - insofar as they lead to a knowledge of the person.  When we stop at the qualities themselves however, the knowledge we have to the other person is amputated from its source and loses its personal quality.  When you say that you know someone  personally, it implies that you have penetrated beneath  the surface - that you have access to waht is hidden - to what cannot be described or explained abstractly.  In France, people like to write books about other people, about what they think, and about why they think what they think, without even having met the people they have written about.  Though some people may find books like that interesting, the conclusions of these authors are simply rationalized opinions dressed up to look like personal knowledge.  You don't know someone personally if you don't love them, you don't love someone truly until you are attracted to them for who they are.

Philosophically, I think we are obliged to say that so long as we do not love someone, we do not know them personally.  If we do not like someone, it is never for personal reasons, it is always for impersonal reasons.  We know that we have discovered, or at least have begun to discover a human person as a person when we are attracted to them.  Personal knowledge is the knowledge of a good, a spiritual good, which must be discovered "in person," because it is a knowledge of the whole reality.

The gestures we use to communicate love often resemble gesture s of seduction - even though teh intention is completely different.  Smells, or odors can be used with the intention to seduce, they can also be used to render one's presence pleasant.  The quantity, quality, and areas of application of perfume is a gesture of smell.  The intention of the gesture could be seduction or attracting attention to oneself, it could also be to subtly render one's presence pleasant.  A gesture has an objective element though, because it acts directly on the senses.  The area of application, kind, and amount of perfume a woman puts on can be unintentionally seductive.  Just like certain embraces, smiles, and compliments or words can be unintentionally seductive.  Modesty is the virtue that governs our gestures so that they correspond to an ethical intention.  Modesty takes into account the objective effect of our gestures on the people around us, and renders those gestures as unequivocal as possible.

Lets look again at our experience of gestures that communicate through odor.  And to do that, lets just simply start by looking at our experience of smell.  We have the experience of good smells, bad smells, the smell of fresh air, the smell of stale air.  Something can smell pretty, something can smell rotten.  Smells help us recognize the presence of a reality.  We can know when someone was in a room by the scent they leave behind.  We can know when someone has arrived by their smell as well.  Smells can mask other smells, and smells can enhance certain experiences.  So if we are to look at the different ethical levels of odor, what could we say?

Is a clean smell basic respect?  This certainly varies between cultures (I can testify to this first-hand, as I live in a community composed of brothers from around the world.)  Those who use products to mask or perfume their bodies the most are the African brothers, and those who pay the least attention in general are the European brothers.  We can all agree, however, that without posing a judgment on personal hygine habits, the most basic level of respect is having a fairly neutral odor associated with one's presence.  One step beyond that, which would be a gesture of openness to friendship, is that of smelling fresh or clean.  Something that smells fresh or clean does not yet imply perfumes or strong smelling shampoo, etc.  Strong odors, even when they are nice, tend to draw more attention than appropriate.

Flowers and potpourri (which in French literally - ironically - means "rot-pot") can be used to create an ambiance that is favorable to the exercise of friendship.  These, along with perfumes, enter the third category of gestures of love that have to do with the sense of smell.  They make a place even more inviting, they add a little something extra to the presence of the person who wears them.  We could talk about cooking here too, the smells of a kitchen can be quite important for the exercise of friendship.  If you are a good cook, the simple act of preparing a meal for a friend is a wonderful gesture of love that is communicated by the sense of smell.  It isn't just the act of service that communicates love, it is the smell of food well prepared also.